


Something I Need

by typewrittentragedian96



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU- high school, Abuse, Abusive John Winchester, Child Abuse, Definite Angsty Shit, Depression, First Fan Fiction, Gen, Happy Ending, Homophobia, Homophobic John Winchester, Homophobic Language, I'm sorry I just can't write humor well, It does get better, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Not a lot of humor...., Overbearing!Michael, Work In Progress, bipolar!Dean, depressed!Dean, stutter!cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-01-20 01:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 72,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1491718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/typewrittentragedian96/pseuds/typewrittentragedian96
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas is a quiet, reclusive, and (formerly) depressed 17-year-old finishing up his junior year of high school in Lawrence, Kansas. Despite his prior wishes, his older brother Michael has forced him to shadow at the hospital in the hopes that he will pursue a career in medicine just like he's expected to. Problem is, Cas hates the hospital. </p><p>But one evening, a new patient arrives that happens to go to his own school, and Cas is sucked into the life of Dean Winchester.  Immediately, they get off to a bad start, with Dean insulting Cas's stutter every chance he gets. Eventually, the boys become friends, though sometimes, Cas wonders if it will become something more....</p><p>This story follows Cas and Dean's relationship as they help each other recover and conquer the various obstacles that stand in their way, and how eventually, they realize that what they need to survive is closer than they ever thought...</p><p>Title taken from "Something I Need" by OneRepublic</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and welcome one and all! This is my first fanfiction that I have ever created and wanted to continue with it, so please don't hate for obvious grammar mistakes!
> 
> On second thought, tear me apart. As all of us writers know, criticism make us better!
> 
> This is a Destiel fic, and hopefully, it will be dark and romantic and adorable and a whole lot of other things that I can't name right this minute! A word of warning before we begin: this is going to get extremely serious and dark very fast. It will include references to illegal activities like stealing and possible drug use, suicide, child abuse and harsh/discriminatory language.
> 
> Well, that's it for now! 
> 
> OH! One last thing: leave kudos and suggestions, and if anyone feels the urge to create artwork or other such things, feel free! It will likely make my day and may or may not end up as my laptop wallpaper eventually! 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!~ typewrittentragedian96

Castiel was not a fan of hospitals.

He couldn’t remember why hospitals bothered him, exactly, but whatever traumatic event or childhood experience had left him panicked and weak-kneed at the mere smell of antiseptic must’ve truly been terrible.

He stood against the wall of the hospital, arms folded and one leg crossed over the other. In some other life, he might’ve looked like the cool kid on the block, if he weren’t dressed in hospital scrubs and the standard hospital shoes. Castiel had a sneaking suspicion that the uniform was meant primarily as a way to show others what true misery looked like with its mint green shade and the significant lack of texture, and secondly to protect the clothes of the doctors and nurses during surgery.

He had a necklace in his hand- a rosary that his father had given him- and he twirled it on his finger very quickly, having mastered the art of not throwing it into the path of a moving person or thing.

A lanyard hung around his neck, attached to an I.D. badge that read: Castiel Novak. Under it, in bold red letters, it said Student Shadow and there was a small stamp on it that stated that he was under the supervision of Michael Novak, the reigning medical professional at Bleeding Heart Hospital.

Michael was the oldest of the Novak children, and technically, he was the patriarch. Their father had died not too long ago, but not recent enough for Castiel to cry every time he thought of him. His father died because of a car crash, and he passed on before reaching the hospital.  Michael had been devastated, but he quickly resolved his feelings to prepare for the task of raising the remaining three children: Anna, Gabriel, and Castiel, though Castiel was really the only one who needed constant care.

It had not been an easy ride so far, but the Novaks eventually readjusted to their professional or school lives in their own ways, depending on the age: Michael returned to his job at the hospital, Anna continued to take college courses online, Gabriel did whatever Gabriel did (Castiel had no idea what exactly he did every day), and Castiel went to Lawrence High School.

_I hate this place_ , he thought absently for the thousandth time in a week.

Castiel was utterly tired of the hospital environment, with all of the beeping of the pagers and the occasional emotional outburst from someone in the waiting room and the hurried movement and even the squeaky wheels on the gurneys made him want to scream.

He had been bored for a while, but he could do little to help his situation, given that Michael practically ordered him to shadow at the hospital. With any other brother, he could’ve dodged and even convinced him to let him find somewhere else to job shadow. But with Michael, it was his way or the highway.

_Sometimes, I wonder if I could jump in front of a moving car so this could end quicker._

Of course, Castiel had little inclination to do so, but it never stopped him from imagining scenarios.

In truth, that was Castiel’s favorite thing to do: imagine scenarios and make assumptions as to how people would react. He liked to be in control of whatever his mind churned out, and moving the metaphorical pieces around to see how he thought others would react.

Some would say that this was a result of Michael’s tendency to control almost every aspect of his brother’s life. Others would say that, because of his chronic stutter, Cas needed that semblance of self-control.

They would be right, in either respect.

If he jumped in front of a car and he managed to get hit, it was likely that the driver would probably get out, take off whatever hat they were wearing (or, if there was no hat, they would put their hands over their mouths in shock), other drivers would be stopped and be standing around his dead body. Someone would be crying, and another would call 9-1-1.

Depending on if he was still alive or not, the call would either mean everything or nothing at all. If he was dead, then there would be consolations, someone would cover his body with a sheet or something like that, and then he would be carted off to the hospital to have an autopsy in the basement. After that, he would get cremated and finally be rid of this damn hospital, but not before his siblings would come to see him one last time.

Anna would cry, Castiel knew that for sure. He had been around his sister his entire life and he knew that her heart was one of the purest and the largest he had ever come into contact with. Anna  was a very emotional girl, but she was not without a level head when the situation mandated it.

Gabriel was a little more difficult, but he was pretty confident that the joking brother he knew would look serious and maybe even sad. He wouldn’t cry, not when he was around others. His reputation as the self-titled “supreme overlord of all douchiness” would have to be preserved, and for Gabriel, it was the only thing he protected more than his family.

Michael was the easiest, because Castiel knew how emotionless he was in grief. He would console the others in a serious tone, then plunge himself into work again. No one would see Michael for weeks, and when they did, he would be unwavering and unshakeable as a slab of dark granite.

If Castiel was alive, he would simply wake up again in this godforsaken place and be forced to sit here until he recovered enough. Then, Michael would continue to make him shadow here, thus the cycle would begin anew. Castiel had been very creative in past scenarios, but every single time he created the possibility of survival, he always ended up back in his brother’s hospital. It didn’t help that in a town like Lawrence, there was really only one real hospital.

He guessed it was simply fate telling him that he would always belong at the hospital, whether he wanted to be here or not. This white-walled, linoleum-floored, 5-story building would be his prison and there was nothing he could do to-----

“WE NEED DR. NOVAK, STAT!”

Castiel was jerked from his self-pity by the shout, and he immediately began to think of the worst. Whenever someone called for Michael Novak, everyone in the hospital knew that they needed someone who could coax someone back from the brink of death, someone whose success rate in terms of patient survival and recovery was the highest in the Mid-West.

A swarm of nurses were advancing towards him, escorting a gurney. All of them had determined expressions on their face, and they moved with purpose. He could see the flashing ambulance lights against the black sky outside of the doors before they shut. Wistfully, Castiel wished that he could be outside, immersed in the soft silence of the black night, where he felt more alive than in the stifling hospital air.

As the gurney drew near, time seemed to slow down and Castiel gained an unfettered look at the occupant.

The person lying down on the gurney was a boy barely older than Castiel himself. The boy had short, blond hair. His face was freckled around his nose and eyes, and he looked as if he were sleeping. There was something around his neck- a necklace or something- but he couldn’t get a good enough look at it. He was wearing a forest-green T-shirt and jeans, but they had seen better days: they were ripped in some places, and in the gaps that he could see through, Castiel saw blood. He looked lean and fit, more so than some of the other guys his age, and his fingers had small grease stains. If the boy hadn’t been lying on a gurney, helpless, and didn’t look dead, Castiel might’ve found him attractive.

Time sped up again, and the crowd of nurses pushing the gurney blocked his view. One of the wheels ran over Castiel’s foot, but he ignored it in favor of the sudden spark of interest in his mind. Most of the patients who came in here were the generic old man or the three-year-old needing vaccinations. But this boy was a teenager, and he wasn’t here for a routine checkup.

_Who the hell was that_? he thought, worry mixing with concern as he watched the gurney travel down the hallway towards the elevator.

He saw his brother step up to them from a room close by, Michael’s face morphing into a mask of stone as he went into business mode, even though Castiel couldn’t remember a time when his brother hadn’t looked like he was still at the hospital saving patients instead of eating dinner with the rest of the family. He was like a gargoyle, perpetually stuck in one mood or emotion, only cracking when no one was around.

Michael was taller than the nurses in charge of the gurney, and Castiel could see from his position that he was busy giving orders and asking for information.

Castiel pushed himself into a standing position and walked quickly, but hesitantly over to the swarm of people as they waited for the elevator. Usually, they would turn to the right and go down one of the hallways to the emergency room on this floor, but he guessed that someone was already in there, and that the congregation of hospital staff were hoping for an open room on the upper floor. Michael’s face was impassive, but Castiel could see the mounting impatience and frustration behind his dark-green eyes. His brother didn’t like to wait, especially when the wait was uncalled for.

He heard snatches of the nurses’ voices as he grew nearer. They were hurried and fast, but not panicked, and Castiel felt happy that the men and women at the hospital were as effective as doctors and nurses as well as being a person to talk to.

“-- get him up to floor 3--”

“--- is there any room---”

“-- Jesus, what happened to him?--”

Michael’s voice cut through the others’.

“--He’s gonna need an IV drip as soon as he’s in the ER. I’m gonna need the best goddamn emergency room nurses and technicians, or else we might lose him. What is his condition?”

A nurse spoke next, a man with brown-red hair with a reedy voice.

“He’s currently stable, but he’s suffering from a concussion, several fractured ribs, gashes along the arms, chest, legs and there seems there is some internal bleeding around his kidneys and stomach.”

Michael frowned, not pleased with the diagnosis.

“What was the incident, Ms. Masters?”

A blonde nurse answered, her voice carrying a hint of a lisp on her s’s.

“According to the hick who called 9-1-1, he was driving along when short-stack literally jumped in front of his truck. He was unable to swerve and hit him almost dead-on. We might be looking at a possible suicide attempt---”

“When he comes out of surgery, he needs to be put in the psych wing until he is verified by a psychiatrist to be mentally sane.”

Michael’s voice was deep and charismatic, and no matter how loudly or softly he talked, everyone always seemed to listen. It was the exact opposite of Castiel, who never seemed to have his gift of speaking.

The elevator dinged, and the doors opened, revealing an empty car. Apparently, someone upstairs had already cleared the way for Michael and his newfound patient. They bustled into the elevator, rotating the gurney so that it could fit.

Castiel squeezed in at the last minute, almost getting his hand caught in the door. He watched the nurses becoming a flurry of activity as the elevator rose. He knew some of them- Ruby with her blonde hair and characteristic lisp, Alastair with his creepy, nasal voice, and there was Samandriel (otherwise known as either Sam or Alfie). It was difficult to see around the tornado of mint-green bodies, but every so often, he got a glimpse of the boy in the stretcher.

Each glimpse was briefer than the last, but….

Castiel frowned, something itching at the back of his mind.

Something was wrong, but what was it?

His eyes roamed over the prone body, trying to analyze everything that he could see. His hands were unclenched, his eyes were still closed. He wasn’t seizing, so that had to be good. There was no abnormal jerking or spasming that Castiel could see---

Wait.

There was no movement at all.

He wasn’t breathing.

Panic overtook Castiel as he realized that the nurses, despite their efforts, had not been able to notice that the boy had stopped breathing, and that his window for possible resuscitation was closing very fast.

“He’s not breathing.” He muttered under his breath, before raising his voice.

“The p-patient is not b-b-breathing!”

Michael, who was standing next to him, started, and turned to gape at Castiel. He was no doubt unprepared to see that his youngest brother was standing in an elevator in the middle of a stressful, potentially career-changing incident when he shouldn’t be, but Castiel didn’t give him the chance to ream him out.

“Look, M-m-michael! He’s n-n-not breathing.”

He pointed, and Michael’s pointed glare swept to the boy, and his face paled just as the elevator finally stopped, and the doors opened. With no hesitation, Michael took the gurney and practically shoved it away from the nurses. They erupted from the elevator in a panicked flood of flesh and worry, and Castiel ran behind them, trying to keep up.

Michael piloted the gurney, with the help of a few nurses who managed to keep up with him, across the floor, startling and scattering any of the hospital personnel in their way. Castiel could see the automatic defibrillator against the left wall, a few feet away, the bright red standing out against the stark white of the hospital walls.

Reaching the device, Michael yanked open the little door that covered the receptacle where the kit lay. He yanked it out, yelling orders to the nurses beside him.

“Open his shirt and apply the gel. Try to make him hold on for as long as you can, we need this boy to survive! Oh, and get Castiel out of the way!”

Polite, yet firm hands latched onto Castiel’s arm, and he struggled as he was pulled away from the boy. He was not exactly angry that his brother wanted him away from the situation, but he definitely was terrified that whoever this boy was would die. Castiel had not been in the presence of death before. He had been acquainted when his own father passed on a few years ago, but to have someone possibly die in front of him was something he never hoped to experience.

Castiel’s breath started to hitch in his throat, and he felt his stomach stir weakly at his thoughts of death. He pushed aside the hands that held him, and sprinted to the bathroom, not caring if he knocked anyone else over on the way.

His footsteps echoed loudly in the enclosed bathroom, bounding off of the tile walls and in between the empty stalls. Castiel slammed the door to an open stall closed, and as he turned towards the porcelain bowl, his only thought was Oh God, what if he dies?!

Images burned themselves in the back of his eyelids: his mother on her deathbed, his father’s embalmed body, a grave outlined against the dark gray of a stormy sky, the boy on the stretcher---

He retched, his eyes closed against the pain and his nose suffering the price. The smell of bile made his eyes water, and he desperately wished that the smell would dissipate before he had to return home or else Anna would have a fit. He hoped that it wouldn’t stick to his clothes either.

When he was done, he leaned weakly against the bowl, trying to catch both his breath and his control over his stomach. It gurgled again, but weaker this time, as if to warn him that while it might not act up now, it could very well decided to empty the rest of its contents some other, probably inconvenient, time.

His hands and face clammy, Castiel stood up and pushed down on the lever, letting whatever he had eaten for lunch slip down the drain. He was still panting, but less so than before, and when he opened the door, he headed straight for the sink.

For a long time, Castiel let the water run, beyond the point of caring. He stared at himself in the mirror, taking in his black bed-head, his shallow cheeks, and his blue-as-the-sky eyes, which now had shadows under them.

_I look like I just got out of a prison camp_ , Castiel mused as he washed his hands over and over. He had washed them at least seven times before he acknowledged that they were probably as clean as Gabriel’s plate after eating a cinnamon roll. His brother’s sweet tooth was legendary and a little amusing, but the thought of food only made his stomach shift painfully once again.

He took deep breaths, honestly hoping to minimize the potential damage to his throat if bile decided to make a return visit.

When he felt well enough to leave the restroom, Castiel pushed open the door and walked out into the hallway. The noise enveloped him almost immediately, the sounds of chattering nurses, ringing phones, and the occasional shouting match between a nurse and some poor guy who was trying to see his wife filling in the void that the bathroom had provided. It was almost overwhelming, and Castiel wondered if he could just leave, just walk anywhere that was quieter than here.

Suddenly, Michael’s tall form practically materialized in front of him.

“What exactly were you doing just now?”

Cas’s face suddenly went very hot, and he could feel the tips of his ears burning under the small cover of hair.

“I-I, uh, was j-just---”

“Last time I checked, job shadowing didn’t involve getting into elevators while a patient is currently inside and I believe there was a requirement not to interfere.”

Cas looked down at his shoes, intently scrutinizing the lines between the linoleum. The memory of seeing the black sky outside became very tempting.

“I have a very important job to do in this hospital, and despite the fact that as my brother, you have a slight advantage over the rest of the orderlies here, as of now, you are only getting in my way. And this isn’t some job that one mistake can be erased with good behavior. Any mistakes, and someone could very well lose their life!”

Michael was shouting now, his head angled so that each word would reach Castiel. He didn’t have to look up to know that his brother’s face was still pale, but a vein would be throbbing on his forehead and that Michael’s dark green eyes would be boring holes into his head.

He understood the risks of being in the way; Castiel knew better than anyone. He had suffered enough minor injuries in the past to know that getting in the way of his eldest brother would be almost suicidal. He was aware on some level that any physical punishment would not be meted out in the company of his employees, but he was not going to risk any of that.

But underneath the logic of his brother’s argument, Castiel felt a twinge of defiance.

Sure, he had been in the wrong place- technically- but without his help, Castiel was sure that the boy would’ve died. He shouldn’t have been interfering in the first place, but the minute he saw this boy on the gurney, he felt a small kinship with him. It had nothing to do with his sexual preference (which was a secret he intended to keep until the end of time; he wasn’t sure how his religious siblings would react to having a gay brother); it was just that, as a fellow teenager who had thought of suicide as a solution before, he knew that the rebound would be horrible, and that he could help.

Castiel never said any of these things to his brother. So he nodded like the ashamed ten-year-old that Michael saw him as, and sighed inwardly as his brother straightened up.

Michael took a deep breath to calm himself, then said in a slightly softer tone, “I’m needed in surgery. When I finish, we can talk about this later.”

He turned and was walking away when Castiel yelled after him.

“Wait!”

Michael turned, his face slipping into a frown again.

“D-d-did- did the b-boy make it?” Cas asked, already inwardly wincing at how his voice cracked. He was seventeen years old; he wasn’t supposed to have voice cracks! Then again, he shouldn’t have a stutter, but he couldn’t help that.

There was a few seconds of silence before Michael nodded curtly, then walked away.

Castiel let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding in, relief coursing through his veins like cold water. He let himself step back until he felt the smooth wall at his back, and subconsciously leaned against it, his legs crossed in the same position he had been in not twenty minutes ago.

 **  
**It was going to be a while until Michael could get out of surgery, but Castiel was, for the first time, not exactly angry at having to wait in the hospital. He pushed in his earbuds, taking out his iPod and pressing the shuffle button. Keane’s piano-driven music cascaded into his eardrums, and Castiel closed his eyes, thoughts of the boy in the stretcher temporarily silenced.


	2. Chapter 2

“CAS!”

The shout startled Cas out of his reverie, making him jerk back with enough force to send his desk a few inches back. The grating screech of metal against the linoleum floor turned even more heads, as if having a simple muscle spasm wasn’t enough. Cas’s face immediately flushed, and he tried very hard not to look at whoever was staring at him.

The approaching footsteps were loud, but small, as if the feet belonged to a small body. They were quick footsteps, and Cas could guess that the girl was barely restraining herself from running.

The empty desk next to him shuddered under the momentum of a body in motion slamming into the seat, and Cas finally looked up to see Charlie sit down.

She was, quite literally, a ball of energy. No matter who met her or under any circumstance, there was no other explanation that people could give that would do her justice. In truth, the moniker “ball of fire” also had some validity: Charlie’s hair was a bright, vivid red color, the kind that never seemed to occur naturally. Her Cheshire-like grin was another of her more notable characteristics, and she was wearing it right now.

“What do y-you want, C-c-charlie?” He said, exasperatedly.

“Well, then. If you are gonna be Mr. Grumpy Gills today, then maybe I might not share some extremely interesting and depressing tidbits of information.”

“Yeah, no t-t-thanks. The last t-time you said those exact w-w-words, I was l-l-listening to y-you t-t-talk for t-three hours about the cancellation of that Joss Whedon show, which was t-t-ten years ago.”

“Hey!” Charlie shrieked indignantly, which caused a few glares and more than a few whispers of ‘shut the hell up’. After turning to glare at whoever decided to tempt the self-titled “Queen of Moondor” (the name came from one of her favorite role playing games, in which she was a super powerful queen of a thieving faction), Charlie turned back to Castiel. He almost jerked back again in surprise because of how sad she suddenly looked.

It was not common for someone to see Charlie Bradbury in a bad mood, much less to see her actually, genuinely sad. There was a difference between the ‘sadness’ she had towards cancelled television shows or on-screen relationships that didn’t match up and true sadness. He had only seen that expression of complete loss and grief once, when Castiel tagged along with Charlie when she visited her mother in the hospital.

Charlie’s mother had been hit by a car a few years ago, and was still in a coma. The doctors had already tried to convince Charlie that keeping her on life support was worse than letting her die, but the ensuing shouting match let the doctors know exactly what Charlie thought of them, and it was not without his friend’s creative use of the word “fucktard”. In any other situation, Castiel would’ve been on the floor, clutching at his sides, but that day, there was no appropriate time to laugh.

After the row she had with one of the resident doctors, Charlie had simply sat down next to her mother’s prone figure, watching her chest rise and fall slightly in synch with the heart monitor. She had been smiling at her mother, whispering words that Castiel knew he shouldn’t hear.

But nevertheless, as he closed the door to give them some privacy, he still saw the look of true grief in Charlie’s normally vibrant eyes. It was something that never failed to pop into his mind before he went to sleep at night, and it always humbled him when it did. He never wanted to wear that look of helplessness, of loss, but he wasn’t so sure if he could

“Charlie? W-w-what is it?” Castiel asked, his hesitation overshadowed by concern.

Charlie smile sadly, and leaned in close, as if she were sharing a secret.

“There’s this kid that goes to our school-- I think his name’s Dean Winchester. Do you know him?”

Castiel shook his head, a frown pulling at the edge of his mouth.

“Well, he’s really hot for a junior and if I wasn’t swinging for the other team, I would eat him up faster than----”

“C-c-charlie!”

“Fine, fine,” she said, her train of thought temporarily derailed. She wrung her hands a little, which was a nervous tick of hers, and he watched as her wrists and fingers made little motions in the air.

“Anyway, something must be up with him or he wouldn’t have- well, uh….”

“What?” Castiel was suddenly aware that he had scooted to the edge of his chair and that he was maybe a few inches from Charlie face. He had an idea of who it was that she was talking about, but given that he wasn’t the type to just jump to conclusions, Castiel had to know if he was right.

“---He wouldn’t have… jumped in front of a truck yesterday.”

His blood ran cold, and his breath caught in his throat.

_It was him. The boy in the gurney._

Castiel’s mind jumped backwards into his memory of the night before, and he remembered everything with an added sense of clarity. The sandy-blonde hair, the ripped shirt, the splash of freckles. All of it was suddenly very defined, and Castiel couldn’t suppress a rush of pity. He had heard what Meg had said as they were wheeling him to the elevator-- _“Shortstack here literally jumped in front of his truck---”_ \-- but he had dismissed it as if it wasn’t important, as he he didn’t know him.

Underneath the wave of pity, he felt a smaller, more subtle undercurrent of something……. different. For some reason, the mental image of Dean refused to leave Cas’s mind, and he couldn’t help but continually trace his jawline, the curve of his eyelids, and the path of the freckles across his nose. He had thought earlier that he would’ve been attractive, and that had been the truth at the time. Now, after associating a name with a face, Castiel’s appreciation of his features jumped from “attractive” to “super-fucking-hot”. He felt a little stab of guilt; the boy was in the hospital! There was a chance he was in a coma or something like that. Oogling over an injured, suicidal boy is not something to do.

Charlie’s voice broke through his ponderings like a stone in water, and the image of Dean dissipated.

“Hey, you in there Castiel?”

Charlie looked concerned, her head cocked a little to the side, and her eyes wide with confusion. There was a small frown on her face, and Castiel was struck with an image of a cocker spaniel that did little to calm the raging emotional whirlwind inside of him.

“Uh, y-yeah. I-i’m here. W-w-why did h-he j-j-jump in front of-f a truck?”

Charlie’s frown only deepened at his insistence that he was okay and was actually listening to her, but after a while, she simply shrugged and her frown eased back into a (still sad) smile.

“No one knows. I have a feeling that his home life is not the greatest, which kind of makes me feel bad for bitching about my foster parents’ inability to realize that caving with Netflix for an entire weekend is totally normal.”

Castiel chuckled at that, and he instantly saw Charlie’s face light up, all signs of the previous emotionally-dampening conversation slipping away. He knew that it would come up again eventually, especially when he told her that she was in the same hospital as Dean literally every day after school.

The bell rang, and without a moment’s hesitation, Charlie got up and went to her seat in the front of the class, next to Jo. Cas was left alone, in the back of the classroom, as Mr. Shurley, the English teacher, walked into the room.

His curiosity was burning him up inside the entire class, and could barely focus. The more the day went on, the more his thoughts strayed to Dean and the image of him not breathing. No matter what he did, the image always made his breathing hitch in his chest and his throat managed to get tight every single time, as if he were about to cry. Castiel still felt the panic when he realized that Dean had not been breathing as if it was ten minutes ago that he had (indirectly) saved his life.  

By the time that school was over, he had endured a particularly stressful day involving Ash’s incessant taunting, Charlie’s angry-but-still-hilarious rant about women’s attributes, and Gabriel’s insistence that Cas find a girl, preferably “one with big tits and a nice ass”. That comment made Charlie revisit her earlier rant, and Cas was forced to listen to it for the second time that day.

When the final bell rang for dismissal, the crowd of students surged forward like a flooded river overflowing the banks. Castiel hated this part of the day because it literally forced him to rub elbows with people he wasn’t especially fond of. Now, Cas liked to think that he was a pretty nice and caring guy; sure, he had his moments where he snapped at everyone he knew, but those periods were infrequent. But even during times when he was likable and outgoing, there were still some people that made him want to break something.

An elbow jutted into Cas’s side, and he winced a little in pain. He would’ve thought nothing of it, considering that it seems only natural to be practically speared in the side by an elbow in a crowd of moving people.

The voice in his ear convinced him otherwise.

“Hello there, Angel.”

The slight British accent made Cas’s skin crawl, but he was not accustomed to having it in his personal space. Usually, the remarks would float across the classroom on puffs of stale air, and he would be able to escape them by retreating into his thoughts or schoolwork for a while. But now, when the the owner of such a revolting voice was standing so close to him that he could reach out and touch his ear with his tongue, there was no escape.

  
“W-w-what do y-you want, Crowl-l-ley?” Cas growled, his irritation making his face begin to burn.

“There’s no need to get snappy, love. This is only a business call.”

Crowley moved to the side, allowing Cas to get a good look at the almost-man who was extorting him.

Crowley wasn’t very imposing at first glance. His brown hair was almost always slicked over with some top-of-the-line product, but not enough to look exceedingly creepy; his demeanor more than made up for it. He was shorter than most of the seniors and juniors at the school; even some of the freshman towered over the Brit. But, unfortunately, his size was not a measure of his worth. In reality, Crowley was one of the more heinous students at the school, so much so that the teachers that weren’t aware of any of his transgressions were too afraid to even accuse him. Even the teachers that knew about Crowley and his dealings had given up any hope for his rehabilitation and punishment.

As they neared the front door, Cas saw Crowley peel away from the crowd to the left, towards the boiler room. He gave a little smirk over his shoulder as he did so, and Cas knew it was an invitation to follow him.

He didn’t want to follow him, because in doing so, he would admit his weakness. He didn’t want to be under Crowley’s thumb all of the time, forced to do things he didn’t want to do. But there was no other choice. He had made that decision a while ago, when he was desperate and depressed, and there was no way back now.

Sighing, Cas followed Crowley into the boiler room. Crowley, ever the gentleman, held open the door for Cas, who walked through without bothering to glance at him. As the door shut behind with a dull clang, the noise of chattering students that Cas clung to was suddenly silenced, lost in the tomb that was the boiler room.

 

The room was uncomfortably hot, which wasn’t a complete surprise. Given it was January and the school was pretty massive by Kansas standards, the boiler needed to work overtime. As a result, the room was filled with the clanking of the massive boiler as it struggled to bear its impressive burden. Already, sweat was beginning to gather on Cas’s brow, and he regretted his decision to come even more.

There were three other people in the room with Cas and Crowley: two girls and a boy. The girls looked like polar opposites, one of them having dark hair and brown eyes and the other having blonde hair and blue eyes. However, even in the dark, Castiel could tell that their eyes gleamed with the same cruelty that all of Crowley’s cronies had. Their names popped into his mind: the darker one was Meg, and the lighter one was Lilith.

The boy was leaning casually against the wall, a smirk adorning his thin, pale face. He had hazel-ish eyes and his were no less creepy. He always had some sort of appraising look on his face, as if he were inspecting prize selections of beef rather than people. Sometimes, his eyes appeared yellow, though Cas suspected it was because of a trick of the light.

“Well, little Angel. Have you come to accept our generous offer?” Azazel’s reedy voice bounced off of the walls, giving Cas the shivers.

“Oh, I hope you do!” said Lilith, her voice almost childlike in the way it started high and dipped low on certain words. “We’ll have lots and lots of fun!”

Meg said nothing, opting instead to smirk at Castiel, and he was suddenly reminded of a hungry wolf.

Cas felt Crowley’s hand on his shoulder, and he repressed the urge to flinch and shrug it off as Crowley spoke.

“Let’s not get too hasty, darlings. He’s only here to uphold his part of the bargain and nothing more. Though, I suppose if you have an answer already, I wouldn’t be indisposed to hearing it.” Crowley looked at him as he said the latter part, clearly expecting an answer despite his attempt to play it off as naivete.

Cas swallowed, his throat suddenly going dry. He could feel them all staring at him, and he was not ready to make such a statement in front of all of them. Instead, he ruffled around in his backpack before pulling out a few pill bottles. As they moved, he heard them rustle against the motion of his hand, and a wave of immense guilt poured through him.

He hated the hospital, that much was clear to him. But it was also a symbol of Michael’s success, his life, and allowing Cas to shadow at the hospital was placing an enormous amount of trust in Cas, and here he was, betraying that trust by handing over stolen hospital drugs. It made him sick, but in the end, the stealing of morphine tablets wasn’t as bad as failing to comply with Crowley’s demands. He had heard stories about such repercussions, and they made him very afraid.

He handed them over to Crowley, taking care not to touch him as he placed them in his open, waiting hand. Crowley held them up to the light, inspecting them as if he was trying to determine their validity. Cas knew it was all just for show, but said nothing.

Finally, Crowley nodded appraisingly and tossed the bottle lightly into the air. Azazel caught it in his long, thin fingers, and Cas watched as he inspected the bottle, fingers slithering over the entire surface. Lilith clapped her hands a few times and uttered an excited squeal and Meg continued to smirk, as if the new development had no effect on her.

“Well, Angel? Do we have an agreement?” Crowley purred, holding his hand out for a handshake that they all knew would never come. After waiting for Cas to make the deal, he sighed, and let his arm fall to his side.

Taking it as a sign to leave, Cas wasted no time zipping up his backpack and walking to the boiler room door. One more second in there, and Cas thought his resolve would vanish through his pores, and that he would join the deranged circus that was Crowley’s Hell. All the while, the guilt tore through him like a wildfire, and he could feel the depression beginning to rear its ugly head again. He squashed his feelings, shoving them deep, deep down into an imaginary lockbox and buried it in the metaphorical dirt.

He had almost reached the door when Crowley spoke again.

“Keep it comin’, Clarence. We need to keep our customers compliant and happy….”

_Clang!_

He was shivering as the door slammed shut. Suddenly feeling light-headed, Castiel turned and put his head between his knees. He took several deep breaths, hoping that they would at least keep him stable until he got to the safety of his car. After a few minutes of silent recovery, Castiel walked out of the double doors to the student parking lot. There were very few cars left in the lot, and his car was all the way at the other end of the space. Sighing wearily, Castiel started the long walk of shame to his car.

Once he got to his destination, Cas let some of his composure slip and he felt a tear trace a path down his cheek. He was not one for showing a large amount of emotion at any given time, except for when the situation called for it, like a birthday party or a marriage proposal (though he had never experienced the latter).

The storm of emotions was muddled and complex, filled with all of the negativity that he had been bottling up for a long time, as was his one bad habit. There was anger there, some of it left over from last night. Sadness had burrowed deep, having done so during a long period of time. The exact cause of this grief was unknown to Castiel, because there was simply too much to differentiate. Part of it was remnants of his father’s passing, and some of it was the sadness that he would never be accepted if he ever came out of the closet.

Yet, a large part of the emotional cloud was resignation. He wanted to give a shit, to fight the influence that Crowley had on him, to take charge and right his own mistakes and save the day, though the latter was almost too cheesy to even acknowledge. He wanted to stand up to his brother, to tell him that he hated the hospital and that medicine was not something he wanted to do. But Castiel was very, very tired. He was tired of this situation, having to deal with Crowley and stealing morphine and owing something to someone so horrible and betraying his older brother’s trust. It was a poisonous kind of exhaustion, one that he had hoped he would never feel again.

 **  
**As Castiel drove out of the student lot that day, he realized that he didn’t know if he could keep the guilt at bay long enough, and that scared him.


	3. Chapter 3

The Novak household was not a lively place.

From the outside, it looked like every other house on the street: it was two stories tall, and the garage was distinctly but snugly attached to the main house. It was painted a nice cream color, not too white as to blind all of the neighborhood children and incur the wrath of the Homeowner’s Association.

Everything was uniform and orthodox, and it was a perfect reflection of Michael’s personality. After their father had died, Michael and the other Novaks sold the house and moved into the suburbs, trying to escape the memories of a family that was lost to the throes of Death.

When Cas pulled up to the driveway, it was just starting to get dark, the indigo hues of the night just beginning to paint the sky. He stopped as he shut the door to his car, staring up at the sky with the same wonder he had when he was smaller. The pastel oranges and pinks made him breathless, and the twinkling of the stars was just beginning to penetrate the somewhat opaque colors of the sunset.

_‘This is the most beautiful time of day,’_ his mother had said. _‘It’s the only time when Heaven and Hell aren’t clashing and fighting for dominion over the world.’_

Cas smiled at the memory; his mother had always been idealistic and he liked to think that his tendency to dream was inherited from her. She wanted to be a writer some day, though she had never acted upon it.

His mother’s smiling face popped into his mind, and it was soon followed by a wave of crushing sadness.

Angrily blinking away tears, Castiel stalked over to the trunk of his car, yanked it open, and practically slammed it after retrieving his backpack. He grumbled silently to himself as he walked over to the front door, put the key in the lock, and walked inside.

The house was silent, as it was wont to be in the afternoon. All of the Novak’s had different schedules, so to speak. Michael was almost always at the hospital, and rarely came home except on certain, random nights; Anna was usually holed up in her room and she never came out until all of us were asleep or had vacated the premises; Gabriel…… No one really knew where he was half the time; And Cas usually mirrored Anna’s behavior, though with less signs of antisocial personality disorder.

The entire house was peculiar, as all of the walls and floors and a few of the appliances were various shades of white, and only white. It reminded him of the hospital, but Cas had grown used to the stark, almost clinical feel of the house, as if it wasn’t really a place of comfort and stability, but a place of confinement and solitude.

Most of the furniture was done in shades of gray, though they were in the lighter part of the color spectrum. Michael despised anything black, and maintained that white encouraged creativity and success. Cas couldn’t give a shit either way, as he thought he would still hate the house if it had been painted blue or mauve.

A peek in the kitchen gave rise to his suspicions that Gabriel was not home, and a cursory follow-up glance at the living room affirmed them.

Cas was alone in the Novak house, and it was not his favorite thing to be.

So he walked upstairs, into his just-as-impersonal bedroom. There was a bed, a dresser, a desk with two chairs, and a door to his own small bathroom. That was it. Cas unceremoniously dropped his backpack to the ground and flopped down onto his bed. His eyes were drawn to the bare ceiling, his mind replacing the white plaster with the vivid purples and oranges and pinks of the sky outside.

He didn’t know how long he had lain there, imagining the darkening sky, but when he finally got up and got dressed for the hospital, it was close to 6:30. He had to reach the hospital by 7, but he always dressed quickly and without ceremony. On his way out the door, he paused, listening for any sounds that Anna was indeed alive and that she hadn’t been murdered in her own room while he was staring at the ceiling.

Huffing silently, Cas retreated up the stairs, stopping in front of an almost identical white door. He knocked once, twice, three times, and then he waited. He could hear the faint sounds of music coming from under her door, but he needed to hear her knock back, just to make sure she also hadn’t escaped out of the window.

Finally, after a few moments of silence, there were three knocks in succession, and Cas turned and went downstairs, a small smile of satisfaction on his face. He liked to think that, with Michael at the hospital the majority of the time, that he had to take care of his older siblings, making sure that they ate and that they got the sufficient amount of social contact each day.

As he slipped into his car once again, after locking the front door, Cas was still smiling, though the thought of seeing Michael at the hospital dampened his mood a little.

By the time he had reached the hospital, he was in a considerably worse mood than when he left home. The immediate change in temperature from the warmth of his car to the frigidity of the hospital’s air conditioning did little to improve Cas’s mood.

He shuffled through the hallways and through the entire process of dressing up in his scrubs in a haze, his music drowning out all of his thoughts----

“CAS!”

Cas jerked out of his daze, eyes refocusing onto Michael’s slightly irritated gaze boring into his own startled one.

“You will be shadowing Pam today.”

Cas gulped a little, turning to look at Pamela Barnes in the eye. She was somewhat short for her age, and while she was still taller than Cas, he knew that eventually, he would tower over her. He secretly couldn’t wait for that day because she continually teased him about her being taller than him, but he knew she meant it well. Pam was a kind person, though not without a biting sense of sarcasm and a tendency to make innuendos whenever possible.

Pam smiled, her pale eyes crinkling at the edges. She smacked him on the arm with her free hand and said, “Come on, Pretty-Boy! Let’s go make the rounds!”

With a slightly uncomfortable smile to his brother, Cas followed her down the hallway.

Throughout her entire shift, Cas took notice of certain things, mainly about Pam. She was incredibly crass and bold in private and in public, though she toned down the former part of her character when talking to patients and their families. She was astoundingly empathetic, and almost always said the right things to get people to stop crying, even if it meant making an extremely inappropriate joke. Cas couldn’t help snickering at her comments, and for some reason, he found the extraordinarily bright smile she gave him in return endearing.

As they transitioned from room to room, Pam would give Cas little tips, usually about being professional to the patients or small things he needed to know about the specific patients they would be visiting. He paid attention, but found he knew almost no one they visited.

Cas’s interest had begun to wane until they were walking to the last room.

“This is our last patient for today, and he’s just come out of surgery. Now, I want you to keep a level head when we go in there.”

“Why?” It was one of the first things he had said voluntarily, and Cas’s voice sounded a little hoarse as a result.

Pam gave him an extremely sensual grin, one that made Cas want to curl up under some sheets or something so that she couldn’t see him blush.

“Despite what television tells you, pretty patients are not consenting partners when they are in a hospital bed. I should know,” she added with another grin. “I’ve tried once or twice.”

Cas half-snorted, half-coughed. Pam laughed at that, attracting some weird looks from the orderlies.

“Just kiddin’, Pretty Boy. Let’s get down to business. The patient’s name is Dean Winchester--”

“W-w-wait. D-d-dean W-winchester?!”

Cas immediately flushed at how his voice cracked like a teenaged girl’s, but Pam didn’t seem to notice-- or, at least, she didn’t let on that she noticed.

“--Yeah, that’s him. He’s a minor, the same age as you, and looks damn fine for someone as young as he is. I won’t go into details about why in the hell someone as pretty as him is here, but it involves some serious psychological mojo and a desperate desire to leave this world behind. I usually have no patience for people who want to throw themselves off of this planet, but with this kid, I just feel sad.”

Cas snuck a glance at Pam, whose voice had become surprisingly soft and vulnerable at the end of her spiel, and he caught a glimpse of the person she hid behind a bold front. Then, like the flash of a camera, the look disappeared, and the Pamela Barnes that Cas knew came back into view.

“Let’s go say hi!”

She opened the door (which Cas noted was B-123) and stepped inside. After a moment of hesitation, Cas followed her inside.

The room was standard in the way it was set up. The bed was in the middle of the room, jutting out from the back wall like a peninsula into an open sea. It was one of the rolly-beds with thick white bannisters and a firm headboard. An IV machine was hooked up to from the left, and on the right, a movable cart sat. On top of it was an uneaten tray of food that didn’t look particularly appetizing, and in the shelf below there was a box of medical supplies like rubber gloves, containers for little plastic vials of blood, and other assorted materials.

The bed had nice, hospital-grade sheets which were blue like the sky. They looked flimsy, as if they would blow away at a gust of air, but Cas knew from experience that those sheets were like granite slabs: almost nothing could move them.

The body under the blankets was covered up to the chest, and Cas could see that the person on it had tried to move the blankets a little. He wondered why he couldn’t until Cas saw the handcuffs tethering the lean wrists to the bannister.

_Suicide watch_ , Cas’s mind whispered. _It’s so they don’t try to slit their wrists with a rusty---_

Cas derailed that train of thought before it fully left the station. He was not going to revisit those memories.

The boy in the bed was still as attractive as Cas had noted the night they brought him in. In the daylight, he could clearly see the cluster of freckles around his nose, a smirk that spoke more of mischief than malice, and short hair the color of straw. With a shorter, flimsier shirt on, Dean’s arms were easily visible, and Cas’s eyes travelled over the muscles of his arms. He was definitely an athlete, capable of handling himself, and a hell of a lot more athletic than Cas. He had gotten a small glance of Dean when they wheeled him in, but other than that, he had had nothing to go on except for Charlie’s rushed description.

What he hadn’t known about was the boy’s eyes. They were green like emeralds, and even from the doorway, Cas couldn’t help but be captivated by them. They glinted in the stale light of the hospital room, and he almost thought he could see thousands of shades of green superimposed on the iris, like the different facets of a jewel. He saw a sadness behind those eyes, along with anger, defiance, and no small measure of worry.

“Hello, Dean. I’m Dr. Pamela Barnes and I’m here to go over some things with you--”

“I’m not talking to you.”

Holy shit, his voice was like pure ecstasy, deep and low like the strumming of a bass guitar. Cas could tell that his face was displaying what he was feeling about Dean, as Dean’s anger-tinged gaze slid over to Cas.

“What’re you lookin’ at, huh? Come to take a look at the newest addition to the Psych Ward?”

The anger in Dean’s voice jerked Cas back to reality, and his stomach dropped with the fear and guilt that he had offended him. The one thing he knew was that being under suicide watch made people extremely irritable and unstable, and Cas wanted Dean to feel as if he was safe, but not being babied.

“I-I’m n-n-not---”

“C’mon, spit it out!”

Dean’s sharp jab made Cas flush, anger quickly replacing the pity that he had felt moments before. He could feel his knuckles tensing, and his jaw clenched. Dean’s gaze did not falter, though a bitter smile appeared on his face.

“Is there a problem, Nurse Blue-Eyes? Cat got your tongue?”

Realization flickered over Dean’s face, and just before the grin widened and the eyes narrowed even more, Cas thought he saw a hint of pity. But it was gone in a flash, and the predatory grin twisted and maimed Dean’s pretty face. He could barely contain a growl of anger at the brazen display of arrogance and sarcasm.

“Oh, does the poor baby have a sp-sp-speaking problem? P-p-poor w-w-wittle n-n-nursie c-can’t--”

“Mr. Winchester!”

The shout cut through the fog of anger and tension in the room, and it took a minute for Cas to realize that it was Pam who had shouted. There had been no kindness in her tone, and when he glanced over at her, he saw that her gaze was covered in a film of steel. There was no tract of Ms. Nice-Pam now, only No-Nonsense-Pam.

He knew Dean could tell, because his demeanor faltered quickly under her scrutiny. He folded in on himself like a high-speed video of a wilting flower. All of his energy and his anger drained out of him within a matter of seconds, and Cas saw the real Dean laying in the hospital bed: a broken and terribly sad boy who had no idea how to navigate his own feelings.

“Now that I have your damned attention, it is the job of this hospital to place people who need care and attention in safe environments, and that includes providing nurse, orderlies, doctors, and the occasional job-shadower to assist in the recovery of said people. But, there is a small trade-off which seems like a really simple and obvious courtesy: you have to respect the provided health care professionals or anyone else who helps. _That_ includes being respectful or, at least, compliant. If you cause more issues with Mr. Novak here--” Pam gestured at Cas “--then you’ll be at the mercy of his older brother, who is the reigning medical professional here.”

Pam stopped to take a breath, still glaring at Dean, who was twiddling his thumbs now. Cas was still dumbfounded and decided that standing still was a good thing to do.

“Now, unless you have anything else to say to someone who has to be here every day, someone who just so happens to be one of the nicest, but emotionally sensitive people I know, I suggest you shut your damn pie hole so I can finish up my psych-eval and tell Mr. Novak Senior that you are not fit to leave this hospital until you have regained emotional stability and when you are not a threat to yourself or others.”

Dean’s head snapped up, looking incredulously at Pam, who was writing things down on her notepad.

“Wait, you’re here to---”

“Yep. Sorry kiddo, but you are going to be here for a while, thanks to that outburst.”

Without another glance, Pam stood up, gave a forced smile to Dean, and ushered Cas outside. As he left, he glanced at the clock. It was 8:42, and they had walked into Dean’s room at 8:35.

Pam had completed a complete psych evaluation in less than ten minutes, and she had gotten all of what she needed from one passing conversation.

Pam put her hands on her hips, breathing in and out like she was trying to keep her composure. She had a pained look on her face, as if she had just witnessed an important surgery and the patient wasn’t waking up. She looked as if she was dealing with a child who was not giving two shits about her. She looked tired.

Finally, she opened her eyes and turned to Castiel.

“Sorry you had to witness that.”

“I-i-it’s ok-kay. S-s-so, you f-f-finished that ps-s-sych evaluation already?” He couldn’t keep the awe from his voice, and he brightened up immediately at Pam’s already-growing smile.

“Yep. That’s what happens when you double up in psychology and medicine in college. The classes were a bitch to navigate around, but here I am!” She raised and dropped her arms, letting them smack against her side.

“W-w-what do y-you think is wrong with-th him?”

Pam paused, thinking a little, and then she turned, her smile turning playful. Cas’s smile fell a little, already anticipating an innuendo or something that would humiliate him. Catching his expression, Pam laughed again, a loud and hearty laugh. Cas laughed nervously along with her, still a little worried that she would pull something. Other orderlies were watching them, probably attracted by the small outburst in Dean’s room, and now they simply turned and ignored them, as if it was something that happened quite often in the hospital.

Finally, Pam settled down, saying, “Whew! Let me give you a piece of advice, Angel-Eyes: sometimes, a good laugh can just about cure anything, even in a place like this. To answer your question, I have a few minutes left before my shift is over, so let’s walk while we talk, alright?”

Cas smiled a little, his attention focusing on Pam’s face and voice. This seemed important and, despite his not wanting to admit it, Dean was interesting. Anything that Pam would say could be helpful if he continued to shadow her and, by association, assist Dean.

“The few things I can point out for certain are that he has suffered a lot to get to this point. There are no real textbook signs of anything, Cas, so don't listen to people who say there are. This line of work is all conjecture and patience; you need to go through a long process to get to the final verdict, like a judge in a trial. He can't just immediately say someone's guilty and be done with it, hope it'll get fixed. I have to look through his files, basically run through possible parts of his life and make guesses- _educated_ guesses-as to what exactly he's suffering from. Anyways, he gets defensive real easily, as if he's used to being the protector quite often. He's very emotionally sensitive.”

 

"So, you really c-can't tell me what his problem is?" Cas was hopeful, almost earnest in his desire to learn, and Pam smiled, remembering that same rush of energy when she was first starting out in her career. Then, life had been full of opportunities and possibilities and the unknown. It was exciting and new, but soon, it lost its luster and settled into the life she knew now. 

 

“I can’t say for certain exactly what his problem is, I’ll have to look through the DSM-V. That’s the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Edition V. I can look through basically everything I’ve observed with him, but it’ll take a hell of a lot of time to narrow it down. I would say that, just as a hunch, he leans more towards the mood disorders like depression or manic-depressive disorder, than others like personality disorders and anxiety disorders.”

She watched as Cas’s face fell, the awe eclipsed by pity, and Pam was astounded by his acute sense of empathy. She was almost concerned that Cas was going to cry right then and there, but he shook his head and angrily wiped away whatever tears had been forming.

As an afterthought, Pam added, “Don’t be too offended if he continues to insult you about your stuttering. His coping mechanism is jabs and crass insults, and he has no other way of defending himself.”

Cas nodded, and smiled as they turned the corner of the floor and proceeded towards the nursing station where Michael was waiting. He was speaking to the nurses, his hands on his hips and a small smile on his lips, and for a moment, Cas almost thought that he saw a remnant of the Michael he knew.

A memory jumped, unbidden, into Cas’s mind, of an earlier time, when Cas had been maybe ten. All of the Novaks had been in the park that day, and it had been a truly beautiful day. The sun had been out and there was a light breeze, the kind that made a hot day even more enjoyable. He remembered distinctly the smell of grilling meat, and the almost-sweet smell of the grass.

Michael was with Cas, on the playground, supervising the youngest Novak as he ran up and down the colored structure, pretending he was the Flash. Cas had always had a soft spot for the Flash, mainly because he could run really fast, and races at his elementary school often required some skill in speed. Also, he liked the colors of his suit: red and yellow.

He remembered Michael leaning in close, a smile on his face, and asking him why he liked the Flash so much.

He remembered his response as if it was ingrained into his head: “If I ran like he can, I could run around the world, catching all of the doctors and bringing them back to Mommy so they could fix her.”

He remembered the tears in his brother’s eyes, and the sudden feeling that he had upset his older brother, and the sadness that followed.

Cas had hugged him that day, and then Michael had picked him up and put him on his shoulders, and he had carried him around like a horse. Cas remembered shrieking in laughter and the largest grin he had ever worn on his face.

It had been an earlier time, before the stutter, before his mother’s death, before his father’s mental collapse, before the transformation of Michael into a shadow of what he once was.

As they approached, the smile dropped from his older brother’s face like a stone, and the impassive expression returned. Similarly, Cas’s memory faded away like smoke in the night sky, and he was left with a lingering sense of nostalgia and sadness.

“All finished, Mr. Novak.” Pam said cheerily, handing him the clipboard with Dean’s psychological evaluation.

Michael nodded curtly, and after looking it over for a minute or so, turned to Cas and said, “Have any problems today?”

“N-no.”

Michael raised one eyebrow, as if he was questioning Cas’s truthfulness. Cas shot him a glare, ignoring Pam’s elbow in his side. The sudden show of defiance was not what Michael expected. No doubt, he was used to Cas being quiet and respectful and compliant, but certainly not feisty. Cas felt a small twinge of satisfaction as Michael blinked a couple times, obviously caught off guard, before the mask slid down again.

“Good. I’ll be done shortly. Wait for me by the car.”

Michael turned back to the nurses, signalling an end to the small confrontation. As Cas similarly turned to leave, he heard Pam say “I’ll make sure he gets there.” and heard footsteps behind him. A hand manifested on his shoulder and it was warm like the sun from his memory.

“That was absolutely kick-ass, Cas.”

“T-t-thanks, Pam.”

He was a little surprised by the look of pride on Pam’s face, and against his will, Cas felt a small smile grow. Both of their grins widened as they walked, and by the time they reached the doors, Cas was full-out beaming, something he hadn’t done in a long time.

“You know what? That oughta be your nicknamed, Pretty-Boy.”

Cas turned, confusion etched onto his features as he looked at Pam, who was standing a little behind him.

“W-what s-should be m-my nickname?”

Pam grinned mischievously, and Cas’s smile faltered a little.

“Kick-Ass Cas.”

 **  
**As the doors closed and as Pam walked back to the nursing station to pack up her things, she thought she heard a muted laugh come from the direction of the parking lot. She grinned, and set back to finding out where her purse had gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okey-dokey! Thanks so much for the support and actual reading of this story. I have been working on this little gem for weeks, just getting the first three chapters done and finished before uploading it! This is the final chapter that follows the other two so close. From now on, upload times will be spaced out more. It's likely that I will have very few times where chapter after chapter is uploaded within a day or two of another.
> 
> I promise, Destiel will start soon, but it will mainly be friendly interaction and development until a ways into the future.


	4. Chapter 4

Over the next few weeks, Cas’s life continued on in a fairly predictable pattern. He woke up around the same time every morning (6:00 sharp), ate breakfast, drove to school, stayed at school until 2:55, stopped at home for a quick snack, drove to the hospital, and stayed there until around 10:45 in the evening.

School was not hard for Cas, as he was one of many overachieving siblings, including his brother Gabriel. It came as a surprise to many people that Gabriel was actually intelligent and that he had absolutely no problem completing school assignments. His lack of effort was the main reason others considered him a loser, and for some reason, Gabe was fine with letting others think that.

He was supportive in the sense that everything he did was for his family. None of the Novaks felt supported very much in the traditional sense of the word when Gabriel switched Anna’s shampoo with Nair, or created a mixture of hot sauce and itching powder to put in Michael’s scrubs, but the Novaks had learned that that was the way Gabriel expressed sentiment: through pranks. They also learned that they had to put up with it, because without Gabe’s compulsion to prank people, all of them realized that their lives would be very cold and lonely.

Nevertheless, Gabriel was the closest to Cas out of all of the children. It was odd, mainly because Cas was almost eternally quiet and reserved, and Gabriel was that kid who got put into detention for talking too much. Yet, somehow, it worked.

Gabriel almost never showed interest in anything Cas was interested in or involved with, so it was a humongous surprise when Cas walked into Dean’s room with Pam and discovered his brother sitting next to Dean, laughing his ass off.

Gabe was a lot smaller than the rest of the Novaks, with wavy brown-gold hair and similarly colored eyes. He had an eternal smirk on his face, as if he knew something that you didn’t. The finishing touch was Gabriel’s unhealthy obsession with sweet things, and as such, he was never seen without at least one candy bar or sweet treat.

Currently, Gabe had a lollipop in his mouth the color of cherries, and Cas suspected that it was probably the flavor as well.

Dean looked a hell of a lot happier, his eyes crinkling up at the edges at something Gabriel said.

“Hello, Mr. Winchester and Mr. Novak.” Pam said pleasantly.

Gabe smirked a little as he said, “Heya there, baby bro and Sexy Nurse #1!”

Cas would’ve smiled, but Gabe’s remark to Pam made his heart stop. He didn’t know Pam really well, but he kind of knew that while provocative jokes were her forte, he wasn’t sure how she reacted to other comments being directed at her, especially from Gabriel. He was known for his partially-misogynistic attitude to women and his objectification of them, which was something that Cas thought he needed to work on.

Pam’s smile did not falter as Cas had expected, but she put her hand in her pocket as if she was looking for something. Finally, after a few seconds of searching, she drew her hand out of her pocket, displaying a fist to Gabriel. Slowly, she put her hand close to her thumb and moved it in a circle, as if she was cranking a lever, and Cas watched as her middle finger slowly rose until it was pointed at the sky.

Dean burst out laughing, his sides shaking and handcuffs jingled against the metal bannister. Gabe grinned toothily as Pam said, “Nice to meetcha, Short-Stuff. Now get out, I have an appointment with your buddy here.”

Holding up his hands in acquiescence, Gabriel threw his now-finished lollipop in the trash-can and sauntered out the door, one hand lifted in a leisurely wave, which Dean reciprocated, his smile faltering a little until it was a straight line. His emerald eyes swept to Cas, and he gulped as the gaze hardened.

Cas hastened to take his place beside the door, arms crossed and rosary in between his fingers. He saw Dean looking at it curiously, but when he looked at Dean, he quickly looked away, as if he was ashamed.

Taking no notice, Pam dragged a chair over to Dean’s bed and sat down unceremoniously. She shrugged her shoulders a bit, then adjusted her pencil before addressing Dean.

“Now, I know all about how you will not talk to me because you do not think you deserve to be saved and all of that defeatist shit. So, I’ll just talk to you and occasionally ask questions and you can choose to answer them. Okay?”

Dean simply glared at her, the tension growing steadily with every passing second.

“ I will remind you, though, that the more you act as if you’re keeping a government secret that cannot be revealed to the public, the more time you’re gonna spend in here.” Pam continued, less forcefully than before.

Dean, once again, said nothing, though Cas thought he saw a glint of worry in his eyes before the glare solidified once again.

Pam sighed, and then said, “I mean, if you wanna fail Sam, then I guess-----”

“Don’t you talk about Sammy!”

Dean’s outburst startled Cas, and he involuntarily yelped. Dean paid him no mind, instead focusing the heat of his almost-deathly glare at Pam, who had not moved one inch.

“You have no right to talk about Sammy! You don’t even know him, what he’s like, what I’ve done for him!”

“What have you done for him, Dean?” Pam’s voice was soft and impassive.

Dean scoffed, a sneer on his face. “Wouldn’t you like to know! You would get such a kick off of me explaining my horrible sob story and how I’ve lived such a terrible life and how much of a bad person I really am inside! Well, fuck you, lady! I’m not saying anything about it to you.”

Pam’s response echoed in the almost silent room.

“Would you tell someone of your own age?”

Dean stared at her, confusion bleeding into his anger. He had been knocked off guard by the question, and Cas watched as his anger dissipated. Cas realized he had been holding in a breath and that his fingers were clenched.

“What?”

“I said, will you be willing to have someone your own age talk to you?”

Dean stared at her in silence for a few seconds, and just then Cas saw the inner Dean, the part of himself that he tried to hide, conceal, the place where he buried what he was feeling so no one could interpret it as weakness. The real Dean was confused and terrified, unsure of where he stood and who he could trust, and Cas felt pity as he stared at the boy who tried to kill himself.

“What would it matter?” he said, sounding so broken that Cas’s heart almost beat painfully in response. “I suck at explaining my feelings anyway…”

“Good!” Pam’s cheeriness confused both boys, and Cas turned to look at her incredulously. She shot a mischievous grin at Cas, and his stomach plummeted as the realization hit him.

“You will be speaking to Castiel here every day.”

“WHAT?!” Dean yelled, his eyes the size of saucers.

“P-p-please, Pam! Not him!” Cas protested at the same time.

Pam shook her head, her grin melting into what could only be described as a motherly frown. It usually occurs with women who are dealing with either their own children or the children of others, and in situations where both children are not cooperating. Cas knew the frown well, as his mother had worn it during countless arguments and conflicts when she was alive.

It seemed that Dean knew the frown as well, considering he immediately shut his mouth and cast his eyes downward.

“Now, this is only until you get cleared as mentally sound and you are determined not to be a danger to yourself or others. So, I’ll leave you guys to it until-”- Pam checked her watch as she got up- “ 10:45, when Cas has to go home.”

No one spoke as she walked to the door, opened it, and said in a definitely not sensual way, “Have fun, boys!” Cas and Dean simply glanced at each other, questioning looks on both of their faces as if to say, She’s not serious, is she?

For what seemed like hours, both boys stayed silent, as the tension filled the room like smoke. Dean stoutly avoided Cas’s gaze, his eyes averted to the floor, the ceiling, the handcuffs, anything that served as a momentary distraction. Cas also refused to acknowledge Dean’s presence, pulling a manual about the dangers of cancer from a small container on the wall.

I can’t believe she did that, Cas thought. He was absolutely terrified and angry and confused and attracted all at the same time. It was one of the absolute worst combinations of conflicting emotions that ever existed. He was aware that the suicidal boy sitting in a bed just feet away would taunt him and leer at him every single time he got the chance, and though he also wanted to help Dean recover mentally, even Cas knew that it was going to be a bumpy ride.

“Okay, I’ll bite.” Dean’s voice bounced off of the walls. “Why don’t we just get this whole Doogie-Howser-moment out of the way so we can get out of each other’s hair as quickly as possible, hm?”

Cas did not answer.

Dean sighed a little, then continued to speak.

“I mean, ignore me all you want. I’m no stranger to invisibility, trust me. I would apologize for calling you out on your stutter or whatever you wanna call it, but I really suck at Hallmark-card moments and expressing my….” Dean waved his arms helplessly, trying to make his brain think of the word.

“T-The word you’re l-l-looking for is f-feelings.” Cas’s voice sounded rough in comparison to Dean’s deep timbre, as if he had swallowed a mouthful of gravel. He put no pity into his words, instead deciding that if Dean was going to talk to him, then he was going to give him some of his own medicine.

He heard Dean perk up in his bed, and he was almost positive Dean was smiling. Apparently, the coldness of Cas’s comment had not been registered.

“It speaks! Thanks, Georgie!”

Cas finally looked up, confusion etched onto his features.

“M-my name’s not G-g-george. It’s C-castiel.”

“I know.” Dean replied. Cas’s face flushed in response, bristling at the inclined insult.

“W-Well, w-why did you c-call me G-G-George?”

Dean’s expression morphed into surprise, and Cas couldn’t help but notice how his eyes crinkled up at the edges when he was happy, or how attractive he looked when he was taken aback by something, or how much Cas was thinking about his physical appearance like a schoolgirl.

“Really? You don’t know The King’s Speech? The movie?”

Dean gaped at Cas’s lack of social knowledge. Cas felt the prickling barbs of anger worm their way to his stomach, and he felt his face begin to burn up in response. Who was Dean to judge anybody? In his position, no less! Cas might have a sheltered upbringing, sure; he might only get to the movies once every summer; but he certainly wasn’t stupid. The look that Dean was giving him suggested that Dean thought otherwise.

Cas was not one to stoop to other people’s level; for one thing, he knew he was at least more mature than the lot of them, and certain that others knew it as well. This situation, however, put him off his game: he was being kept in a room with a suicidal teenager, who was probably a delinquent, and they were supposed to talk their feelings out until there was nothing left to say.

_Well, screw that!_ Cas thought, partially taken aback at his sudden surge of defiance.

_I’m not going to sit here and obey everything other people say! I’ve had enough of that from Michael._

So Castiel did something stupid: he refused to speak for the rest of the three hours that he stayed in that room.

Dean tried to talk to him, starting with a weak apology before scowling and returning to his usual routine of grumbling insults under his breath, all of which Castiel heard. He should have just apologized for being an ass, but right now, he was feeling petulant and childish, and when that time comes……

Finally, as it was nearing 10:45, there was a jingling of the key in the lock, which surprised Cas. Now that he thought about it, he should’ve checked to see if the door was at least locked or something like that, but somehow, it slipped his mind. Maybe being in the same room as Dean Winchester did that to people: made them less observant, less aware.

It’s certainly not because of how hot he is, Cas’s mind whispered salaciously, and it was all he could do not to run out of the door, instead of forcing himself to settle to a brisk walk. He brushed past Pam, ignoring her question, “So, how did it go?” He simply kept walking and walking until he hit the doors to the parking lot, and with a rush of relief, escaped into the cool night air.

*~*~*

Pamela Barnes was very confused.

For one thing, her boss had practically ordered her to keep watch on his brother, who was one of the oddest people she had ever met. Cas being odd wasn’t necessarily a problem for her; Pam had seen and been with many odd people in her life. She knew how to interact with them, to talk to them and make them feel better about being themselves, no matter how weird that it may be.

Cas, however, was a conundrum.

He was kind and polite and courteous, if not a little shy. This wasn’t a problem, because she knew how to push the right buttons to make him smile or even talk without looking like a deer in headlights.

Cas had also been suicidal once before, and her training as a psychologist and psychiatrist had given her enough experience that she knew when to back off and when to push forward. Luckily, Cas had not been regressing back to his depressed state that he had been in a year or so before, so she was allowed a certain amount of leeway with how casually she spoke.

But there was one thing that had been nibbling at the back of her mind for weeks now, and at this point, she was sure that Castiel played for the same team that she did.

Pam was no stranger to the minds and habits of others, and she did her best not to pry into personal lives unless she felt that it would be beneficial to the person whose affairs she would be meddling with. Her college classes had been interesting, but nothing was more mysterious than sexual orientation, and she had been particularly fascinated with it. Her interest had dug deep, so much so that her thesis was entirely on sexual orientation and the effects that cultural society had on its interpretations and criticisms. She knew the signs of questioning sexual identity well enough, and she saw many of them in Castiel.

He was nervous around people, especially around men. Though his stutter contributed to his inability to talk, Pam believed that same anxiety around attractive men made it worse. Besides, she had had enough observational evidence to determine that Cas was, at least, bisexual or gay. It saddened her to know that he was in the closet, and so she silently dedicated herself to helping him out.

That was what fueled her decision to make Cas and Dean talk every day. Besides the obvious psychological benefit for Dean, she had seen the looks that Cas had flashed at Dean when both of them weren’t looking- or, in Pam’s case, when he thought she wasn’t looking. And she had seen a fair share of reciprocated looks from Dean, and she thought it could help Castiel come out of his shell, pun not intended.

So, she was obviously surprised when Cas practically sprinted out of the room, face looking like it was on fire, and even more so when Dean was in the same sour mood as he was before he left, though now, it was tinged with sadness or maybe regret.

“What did you say?”

Dean flinched at her tone, and Pam felt a twinge of guilt at being so harsh. But, she was looking out for Cas, and he had enough family stress as it was without adding on being insulted by a patient in the Psych Ward of the hospital.

“I-I tried to talk to him, I really did! I just called him George- you know, like King George VI from the King’s Speech--”

“You can see why that could be construed as offensive, right?” Pam interrupted, slapping a hand to her forehead as the magnitude of his mistake hit her in the face.

“--I know, I didn’t mean it like that! Anyway, he didn’t react so I asked him if he ever seen the movie and then he just---” Dean waved his arms in the air, trying to fit what he was thinking into words. Finally, after a minute or so of sputtering, he just wilted, his face becoming pale and gaunt. His arms fell uselessly to his side, and his brilliant emerald eyes dimmed.

Pam sighed, sadness washing away the anger like a sandcastle in high tide. She was tempted for a moment to wave a hand in front of his face or snap her fingers under his nose or do any number of things that could get his attention, but Dean had withdrawn into himself, and only he could bring himself back out again.

Realizing that there was nothing she could do, Pam walked to the door and, as she was leaving, turned one last time to gaze at the boy in the bed. She wondered how such  pretty face could be so full of pain, and that thought weighed on her for the rest of her shift at the hospital.

When Michael dismissed her for the evening and asked her about Castiel, she replied “No problems.” She didn’t know a lot about her superior, but she was around him enough that she found she did not like him very much. He was often cold and emotionless, and sometimes, he was a ruthless son of a bitch. Pam knew he wouldn’t hesitate to punish someone for any transgression, and would not blink twice if he fired her.

So she kept her mouth shut around him, and she followed orders. But that didn’t mean she didn’t like him.

He gazed at her, as if he were able to see her very soul, and that he was weighing her trustworthiness. Moments passed, and Pam was beginning to get nervous- well, she had already been nervous, but now she was reaching anxiety levels- when Michael finally nodded, offering what looked like a grimace.

 **  
**“I’ll see you tomorrow, Doctor.” Pam said,  and after grabbing her purse, walked out the door to the same parking lot where not ten minutes, Cas had headed out to. And, as she drove home, made herself tea, and got into bed, Pam wondered if her little plan could work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's some Gabriel for you! He will make appearances in later chapters, as will Sam and John Winchester, so don't fret, my lovelies!
> 
> Also, I have another story in development that is a Hogwarts!AU, and it has reignited the fires of Harry Potter in my mind! I'm just designing the shit out of everyone's wands while trying not to take parts of other stories or tumblr blogs! When I get the story rolling, I will post it here, along with all of the illustrations of their wands and houses and all of that good stuff!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry, my pretties, for the wait. I have had a hectic week filled with AP Exams and a Mother's Day baseball game on Sunday, so both of my stories have been on a small mini-hiatus. However, now, I come bearing gifts! A new chapter!! 
> 
> *hands a metaphorical copy to each one of you*
> 
> Now, make sure it stays in good shape, and, as always, any fanart is appreciated!

“Are you kidding me?!”

Charlie’s voice almost made his eardrums burst, so he winced and put a hand up as if to ward his now-angry best friend away. He was not in the mood to be yelled at, especially since Michael yelled at him again for knocking over a tray full of medical instruments. That had been a fun experience- being reprimanded like a child in front of most of the hospital.

Now, Charlie was angry because of something that was apparently lost on Cas, as he said, “What?”

Charlie’s face was set in a determined expression, her mouth drawn in a thin line and her hands on her hips. Today, she was wearing a similarly red Star Trek shirt, which was odd, considering that the red-shirts always died. Nevertheless, he decided not to bring it up for fear of further reprimanding.

She practically slammed herself into the desk next to his, and it was all Cas could do not to scootch a little bit to the right.

“You’ve been interning at the hospital where my mother is currently dying- which isn’t the main point of this, you just wait- for, like, a few months and then that kid Dean Winchester jumps in front of a damn truck and he lands himself in the very same hospital where you work, and you neglect to even tell me about him or what he’s doing or what he’s like! It’s like I’m that friend who nobody talks to when something interesting happens! Don’t you trust me?”

Charlie sounded so put out at the end of the rant that Cas felt a pang of guilt in his gut. He should’ve told her; she had been the one who gave him a name to a face he didn’t know. Besides, she probably deserved to know anyway. She dealt with depressing, boring Cas already.

So, Cas said, “Y-yeah, well. He’s a b-b-bit of a j-jerk.”

Charlie actually looked surprised at that, and her initial frustration ebbed away as curiosity took over. She relaxed her rigid posture, leaning forward so she could hear more.

“W-when I f-f-first met him, he t-t-taunted me about my st-stutter. And the n-next time, he c-c-called me ‘Georgie’, like the k-king in that movie.”

Charlie winced at that, recognition dawning on her face almost immediately. Cas liked that about Charlie; she was as flighty as the wind, but she was always partly sympathetic even when she was angry, and she was always able to see both sides of the argument. Also, she was a wealth of pop culture knowledge that Cas lacked, and she helped him out when someone called him something he didn’t know.

“Well, how are you even talking to him, anyway? Doesn’t Michael have your leash tighter than one of those ‘jaws of life’ contraptions firemen use?”

Cas nodded (and flushed) as he told Charlie the story with Pam. He watched her face intently, observing her shock at Pam’s guess that his father was abusive, sad when he mentioned Dean’s outburst about Sammy, and furious when he relayed one of their relatively-few conversations.

When he finished, she simply sat there, digesting the information, and when she was done, Charlie looked at him determinedly.

“You are going to talk to him, whether you want to or not.”

Cas started to sputter indignantly, but Charlie shushed him with a wave of her hand, and she continued on.

“Now, he obviously has some issues or he wouldn’t be in the psych ward. You see him every day, and you have been forced into an arrangement to talk to him every day. Last time I checked, you were once depressed and suicidal and that you have said, on multiple occasions, that you want to ‘help people who are as you once were’, to use the same extremely-formal language you use. SO. This is the perfect time to do it, and besides, if you don’t become friends, then at least you spent time in a room with an unbearably attractive boy. Capisce?”

Cas was resisting the swell of emotion inside of him that stirred when he heard the comment ‘unbearably attractive boy’. Now, Castiel Novak was not one for expressing emotion, that much was clear to everybody he met. Sure, he could act all excited and happy when he needed to, but actually saying what he felt was not his forte. Charlie was the only one who could decipher Cas, and help others navigate through the enigma that was talking to him. He liked to think he could possibly be apathetic through constant taunting over his stutter and his continued servitude under his controlling older brother, but Charlie knew better than Cas did that he needed to meet the right person before he opened up.

She also knew (for months now) that he was not straight. Whether he was bi or gay meant nothing to her. Cas was her best friend, and she was lesbian, for God’s sake! She was supportive of anybody that wasn’t an overly-religious-holier-than-thou-asshole, and Cas was as far from that as possible.

The facts were very clear in her mind: Cas was not straight, Dean had the strong possibility of not being straight, and both boys were suitably attractive and damaged that they needed each other to fix themselves.

But, of course, she never told Castiel any of this, but it still didn’t dampen the smile on her face when Cas reluctantly nodded.

My little closeted baby is growing up, she thought happily as the bell rang and class began.

*~*~*

Cas opened the door to room B-123 quietly and slowly, not wanting to give Dean the wrong impression. He didn’t want to really be here, but something was still pulling him back to this room and this damaged and rude boy, but he wouldn’t allow himself to think it was simple physical attraction. No, he was above that.

Dean was sitting on the bed, staring out the window. He didn’t react when Cas came in, and right then, he knew something was up. Cas tentatively walked over to the bed, peering around Dean’s rotated frame to see his face.

His eyes were as vivid as they had been the last time he saw them, but now, they were glazed over, as if he were blind. He knew just from experience that he had withdrawn into himself, as Cas usually did when he was depressed.

In truth, that was the only part that Castiel admitted wasn’t horrible about being depressed. Sure, the almost-constant suicidal stream of thoughts was horrible and the actual attempted suicide was painful beyond belief, but the parts of the day when he tuned everyone else out so it was just him and his mind…. those were simple, peaceful days. It was like a light switch over his perception, as if he was seeing, but not really seeing. He could play around in his mind for hours at a time, most often at night when he couldn’t sleep, but it had its fair share of problems too. The longer he stayed, the more often he wanted to leave the real world behind. Cas only hoped that Dean had not gotten to that stage yet.

Sighing, he shouldered off his backpack loudly on the floor, as one last test to see if Dean would flinch. There was nothing, not one response from the almost-comatose boy, so Cas unzipped his bag and pulled out a book.

He was most fond of reading, and it nearly encompassed everything he did in his spare time, aside from homework or singing, which was a secret talent he refused to share with anyone. Every book that caught his eye was fair game, and a glance at the jacket and a first chapter reading was enough to judge whether or not the book was worthy of further time. All fiction was open to him, and he avoided nonfiction (save for mythology books) avidly.

Today, he had brought the first book of the Song Of Ice And Fire series, The Game of Thrones. He had heard wonderful things about the show, and the books were also supposedly good (save for the incest and the almost dismal character-death ratio), and so he had finally caved in and bought it.

Dragging over a chair to the bedside, Castiel sat down ungracefully and opened the book in his lap. The clock was the only source of noise in the room, and for something supposedly so unnoticeable, each significant tick was like a sledgehammer in his ears. He tried in vain to read silently, but the overwhelming lack of noise suddenly overwhelmed him, and he gave up, sighing discontentedly.

A sudden thought occurred to him, one that was almost too ludicrous to even attempt. It would be just like the chick flicks Cas hated ever so much, but it was worth a try, wasn’t it?

Clearing his throat, Cas looked once more at Dean, who was still staring at something he could not see, opened his book to the first page, and began to read.

“‘W-we should start b-back,’ Gared urged as the woods g-grew d-d-dark around him….”

Cas stumbled through the first few lines horribly, the hard consonants like “g”, “d”, and “c” tripping him up. They were the only resulting problems with his stutter, the others having been carefully smoothed over and managed over the years. Therapy had done a lot for him, more than he could’ve imagined, but sometimes he anguished over his inability to pronounce words without a few feeble attempts.

Glancing up once more, he started on the second paragraph, and aside from the usual stutters on the consonants, he smoothly continued through the description of the woods, the journey of the Black Watch, and the encroachment of the white-skinned, cold-generating, decidedly-evil creatures. It was a dark prologue, and he had no doubts that the rest of the book would be just as dark and sinister.

He continued reading aloud, his voice echoing around the mostly empty room, and he delved into the politics of an execution. He felt very similar to the small boy, Bran, who was in the midst of something he didn’t understand and was in a transition from boy to man, and also Jon Snow, as a man who is not the same as the rest and is acutely aware of it.

At the end of the chapter, Cas looked up, and was surprised to see that Dean was staring at him with an unreadable expression on his face. He faltered, and the attractive boy’s forest green eyes widened.

“Nonononono! Don’t stop!”

Cas was shocked to say the least, but it didn’t stop him from answering.

“Since when d-d-do you c-care about what I d-do?”

“Well, since you barged in here and started reading in that phone-sex voice of yours!”

Cas flushed violently, and he would’ve responded, if he wasn’t so damn confused. He knew what flirting was, and while he thought he could tell from the name what ‘phone sex’ was, he wasn’t looking forward to finding out. Besides, he had never been flirted with before, so this was entirely new territory to him.

So, he did what he always did: flashed him a deer-in-headlights look.

Dean started laughing almost immediately, and to Cas, there was no better sound in the entire world. It was warm, and rich, and full of life that he hadn’t noticed before. Granted, he had been irrationally angry with him since he called him “Georgie” and insulting him about his stutter.

When Dean finally quieted down, which took considerably more time than he thought, Cas was surprised to find that there was a broad smile on his own face. Dean apparently noticed, as he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, and he blushed in response, heat rising in his cheeks until he felt as if he were on fire.

“S-s-sorry that I g-got all angry last t-t-time. I just d-didn’t know how to react.”

“It’s all good, man. I screwed up, too. I mean, I compared you to a king who had a stuttering problem. I’d say that we both screwed up equally.”

Dean’s face looked determined, as if he were ready to overcome any odds to right any wrong, as if the entire world weighed on his shoulders and it was his sole responsibility to hold it. There was a pang of pity in the pit of Cas’s stomach, but he swallowed it, not willing to bring up any other similar feelings.

“Well, start over?”

Cas nodded, and Dean beamed. His heart did a little flutter in his chest, and his mind decided to betray him. An image swam up in his mind, of Dean and him dressed in white tuxedos in what suspiciously looked like a wedding----

Nope. Not now.

Shaking his head to clear the fog, Cas held out his hand for Dean to shake.

“My name is C-c-castiel Novak.”

Dean smiled that brilliant smile again, and grasped his hand in his, shaking it firmly.

“And I am Dean Winchester, though my friends call me Batman.”

Cas laughed and said, “I seriously d-doubt it.”

“Yeah, well, you’d be right. I’m the only one who calls me Batman.”

“Self-c-c-confidence is a good thing to have.”

“I guess so, if you can call it confidence.”

Cas squinted at Dean, more than a little confused.

“What else would you c-c-call it?”

Dean’s smile was sad, and it spoke volumes. Here was the real Dean, the one he hid from the others, kept concealed by easy smiles and sarcastic one-liners. Here was the demon inside of him, the darkness that whittled away at his happiness, his will to live, and shoved him in front of that truck.

“Cowardice.”

Cas leaned forward, completely and uncomfortably aware he was closer to Dean’s body as he did so. Nevertheless, he pushed past the uneasiness and put his hand on top of Dean’s. It was a little cold, as if the warmth from the handshake had been superficial. He gazed quite intently into those green eyes, still aware how awkward it was. For some reason, Dean held his gaze, slightly dimmed in sadness.

“You. Are. Not. A. C-c-coward.”

Dean didn’t answer, so Cas continued.

“There is nothing honorable in c-c-cowardice, D-dean. And with you, I d-don’t see someone who has thrown away his honor, his d-dignity. I see someone who has lost his way and who simply needs help in c-crossing back over the river into the world. You c-c-can be fixed, D-d-dean.”

Dean was crying now, tears streaming down his face as he held back body-racking sobs. Cas was ashamed to think he could still look so attractive sobbing, but he pushed it aside in favor of consoling Dean.

“I’m a bad person, Cas. I’ve done so much wrong, so much. I mean, I jumped in front of a truck, for God’s sake! In God’s book, even if I’m not sure it I believe in a god or deity, that makes me a sinner. I’m bound for Hell, Cas, on a one way train with no return ticket!”

“Now, that is being a c-c-coward, D-dean. Being c-cowardly is g-g-g-giving up when the fight is tough, when you run because you c-c-can’t win easily. Well, g-g-guess what? This is not g-gonna be easy, so you better suck it up or else you’ll fall even d-deeper into a pit that is hard to g-g-get out of. You are an amazing guy, D-dean! I d-d-don’t know much about you, but what I d-do know is that you c-care for your brother a lot, and that you would d-d-do anything to make him safe. You are not g-going to Hell, D-d-d-dean, or else I will go d-d-down there and g-grab you myself. Got it?”

There was silence, shocked silence, from both parties. Cas was shocked that he had spoken for such a long period of time, while Dean was shocked that someone actually cared enough to scream at him. The silence hung in the air like dust, and it was almost suffocating in the fading afternoon light.

“Got it?” Cas said again, much softer than before, peering into Dean’s verdant eyes.

It was the most sudden reaction that Cas had ever witnessed, and he almost wasn’t sure what happened until much later. Of course, he knew what was happening, but his brain seemed to short-circuit, and he had trouble fully comprehending what had just occurred.

All he was sure of was the firm hand that was clasped around his neck, the feather-light touch of lips against his own, and a complete and utter warmth that practically exploded in his chest. It lasted much quicker than his mind made it out to be, and he had trouble remembering that his first kiss had lasted less than five seconds.

Dean pulled away with a sharp intake of breath, and Cas saw that his eyes were shining like emeralds in the sunlight. There were tears still on the edge of his eye, but other than that, he wasn’t crying anymore. It suddenly struck Cas that the boy in front of him was only seventeen, and that most boys would be ashamed to have cried in front of anyone. Dean definitely seemed like that sort of guy at first, but now, he wasn’t so sure.

Of course, throw in the fact that he kissed him, and Cas wasn’t really sure who he was anymore.

“Sorry,” Dean breathed out, his voice so small in the silence. “I-I didn’t mean to-- It’s just that, uh--”

“It’s okay,” Cas said, which surprised him. He hadn’t expected to be okay with being randomly kissed by a stranger- a suicidal stranger, at that.

“I don’t usually, you know…” he gestured to Cas, something that was enough to offend him. But Cas shoved it down, his mind already jumping to conclusions and assumptions. It probably wasn’t indicative of his sexuality; he was in the moment, he was probably bipolar. He might’ve not had control of his actions in the sense he wasn’t thinking straight. Yet the curiosity still thrummed in his veins.

“Are you, uh, g-g-gay?” Cas blurted.

Dean’s face was not one of shock, and it didn’t look as though he was offended or anything. f anything, he looked more confused than ever before.

“I don’t think so. I mean, I still like girls, but I guess….” He trailed off, not willing to finish the thought, as it had already been said.

“O-okay.” Cas said, and the room dropped back into awkward silence once again.

“Are you---” Dean asked, but Cas cut him off, no unkindly.

“Yes.”

It was the first time he had ever affirmed his sexuality out loud before, and for some reason, it was much less eventful than he pictured. He expected some sort of big feeling of relief, like releasing a breath he had been holding in. He expected a cosmic sense of knowing, of being able to say it out loud or to himself and have it not sound odd or weird. he supposed that that would come with time.

Dean nodded, a kind look on his face.

“Don’t worry, though. I won’t tell anyone. Besides, I don’t really have a problem with it.”

“Okay.” Cas said.

The door opened just then, and both boys turned to look as someone entered.

Actually, more like two someones. The older of the two was unshaven, and his brown eyes were cold. He was at least in his 40s, possibly 50s, and he was a little large around the middle. His arms and posture, however, spoke of a career that involved a lot of muscle, like the army or the marines. Cas saw a pair of dog tags peeking out from only a moderately dirty shirt, glinting in the light.

Military it is, Cas thought smugly, somewhat prideful of his Sherlock-Holmes-esque deductive skills.

The other person was way younger than the other man, and Cas guessed it was his son. The boy was maybe 13 or 14, and he was immensely tall, even for his age. His eyes were a bluish-green, and they were some of the kindest eyes he had ever seen- save for Dean’s. He was taller than his father, but only just, though Cas thought he would overtake him further.

The man narrowed his eyes at Cas, but the boy immediately walked forward and stuck out his hand, a winning smile on his face.

“Hi! Name’s Sam. I’m Dean’s brother! You must be Cas. He’s said a lot about you.”

Cas’s face blanched and, he turned a little towards Dean just in time to see him flush bright red. So, Dean had been talking about Cas for God knows how long. What was he saying about him that warranted the attention of others? Was it good? Was it bad? Would he regret hearing it at all?

Cas shook his hand and said, “G-g-good things, I hope.”

Sam chuckled, a nice sound that seemed to shatter all tension in the room.

“You bet! He would go on and on and on about how your eyes and your hair and your voice---”

“Dude, shut it!” Dean whispered savagely, and nodded a little towards their father. Sam’s face paled almost immediately, but he still kept that smile on his face. Their father’s eyes were narrowed, and colder than before, but he said nothing and didn’t move an inch.

He knew it was an attempt to hide something that no doubt was a touchy subject in the Winchester household. Cas, however, wasn’t born yesterday. He could see it clearly in his mind’s eye: Dean getting glared at and possibly yelled at for his abnormality and how he was a sissy, a faggot, a sinner, and Sam sitting in his room, waiting for it all to blow over and to hold his older brother as he cried and wished it all would end.

He had been there before, in almost the same circumstances, and Cas felt an old and bitter anger tear through him like a wildfire. He wanted to hit this man, to break a bone or maybe more just to show him how someone like him was just as capable of fighting back as the next guy.

Instead, he plastered a smile on his face and respectfully said, “You must be Mr. Winchester. I am sorry if I’m intruding on your visiting hours, and I will be waiting outside if you need me.”

He felt Dean’s eyes on his back and when he turned back to close the door, he shot a comforting glance at him. But he saw terror in his friend’s eyes, and he wasn’t sure if that one look was enough.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YEAAAAAAH! The spark that ignited the fire! The whisper that turned into a shout! The one-thing-that-starts-another-thing! I've run out of little ideas.... The Destiel is strong with this one! I thought, well, I might as well give them something to go on so they aren't totally Destiel-starved before it gets more prominent in the storyline!
> 
> Also, Sammy and Mr. Winchester are here! I wonder what John will say, now that Sam's brought up what is clearly an old issue..... 
> 
> *wrings hands maniacally*
> 
> Keep reading, keep writing, and always make sure to keep a container of salt nearby for emergencies!  
> ~typewrittentragedian96


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's some Dean backstory! Prepare for some seriously hard subject matter and the inability of John Winchester to be a good parent. Also, there's some seriously hard-core language in this chapter, as the eldest Winchester is unable to consider his son a normal person, and it is heavily homophobic. 
> 
> Please remember that I am in no way homophobic in either my private or my public life. In fact, I am extremely supportive of the LGBT movement (I mean, I am writing a fanfiction with a predominately LGBT pairing) and despise homophobia in all of its forms. However, it is necessary for me to include such language because it better assists the plot movement and the exploration of characters. 
> 
> Now that the official warning is over, without further adieu, is the first of a few Dean POV-chapters.

The click of the door was almost deafening in Dean’s ears, and he barely contained a shudder at the finality of it. Sure, he knew that doors could be reopened and that unless they were locked, they opened on both sides. But there was something about this particular click of the door that bore more uneasiness than the others.

He tried not to look at his father.

John Winchester was, without a doubt, one of the few people that Dean Winchester openly hated and despised. Twisted into that storm of anger was a vein of sickly-sweet dedication that a son owes to his father, but it had long since lost the name of ‘love’.

‘Love’ was when a mother stays by her son’s bedside while he’s sick until he’s better.

‘Love’ was when a girl or a boy finally holds the hand of someone they find enjoyable to be around.

‘Love’ was when a father didn’t abandon all sense and logic in return for bitter hate and scorn, when he wouldn’t hit or call his son names when he came out of the closet, when cigarette burns were only from accidents and not because an intolerant old man who pressed them into your skin, screaming at you that you are subhuman, a creature that is doomed to die a horrible death and endure even more after.

‘Love’ was not what pushed Dean Winchester to jump in front of a truck a few weeks before.

In all sense of the word, Dean forgot that love even existed.

Sam had taken his usual place beside the bed, in the chair that Cas had brought up so he could read. Today, he looked happier, though maybe a little tired. Dean thought he saw purpling bruises in his brother’s arm, near the shoulder, when he reached over to grasp his hand. He shoved that thought away, not willing to bring up his own memories of bruises received.

Slowly, with a dwindling amount of courage, Dean looked up at his father.

John Winchester was a big man for his age, though not in the impressive way he had been when he was younger. His muscle hard earned through military service had regressed and retreated, hiding under a small layer of fat that had accumulated over the years. His midsection was marginally thicker than it used to be, but other than that, he still could see the hard, military man underneath, the man who gave the orders and expected to be followed.

His brown eyes used to remind Dean of hot chocolate and nights by the fire, but now, they were the color of hardened and embittered bronze. They were cold and merciless, and he prepared for the onslaught to follow.

Sam broke the silence with a quiet plea that went unfinished.

“Dad, please--”

“Shaddap, boy!” their father barked, and Sam looked down in an instant. It was a reflex from years of watching Dean get beaten; just put your head down and let it pass. Don’t speak up. Be quiet.

Mr. Winchester turned to Dean now, his glare sending stabs of fear into his very soul. This was not the look of a man who loved his son, but a man who hated him with every fiber of his being. It was likely he didn’t care that he was the cause of Dean’s depression and resulting suicide attempt, or that he wasn’t fully aware. He was constantly infused with alcohol, as if it was the replacement for his dead wife, so Dean wouldn’t deny that the alcoholism was enough to stifle most logical thought and reasoning.

“Now, I’m going to say this once, y’hear? I will not have a sissy for a son, especially not one who enjoys running in front of trucks and abandoning the only family he has left. Your brother and I are all alone at the house, now, and there’s a very little chance you have to protect him, the little shit. I know all about your little perversions, boy, if I can even call you that anymore. It certainly seems like you’ve all but turned into a damn woman.”

His voice was calm, but venomous, and Dean couldn’t help but sit and bear the brunt of the crusade.

“I mean, something must be wrong with you, to go and spit on your mother’s memory like this. She wouldn’t want you to want to fornicate with other boys, she wouldn’t want you to throw away the salvation the Lord promised you, she wouldn’t want you to abandon the family she helped create!”

Dean had been holding in all of his anger, and it was just beginning to get under control when he snapped.

“YOU DON’T TALK ABOUT MOM, YOU ASSHOLE! DON’T YOU DARE BRING HER INTO THIS---”

John Winchester moved quickly for someone who hadn’t exercised profusely in the years past. Within seconds, his face was mere inches from Dean’s, and his hand was raised in the air as if he was going to slap him. Instantly, Dean flinched, a reaction born from being beaten or threatened with a beating one too many times. He stood there, hand poised above his head, and Dean had to remind himself to breathe.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting and tense silence, John Winchester’s hand fell and Dean let out a breath he had long been holding in. Sam was stock still, standing as rigid as a board and head pointedly focused on the ground.

“Listen here, you little faggot.” John’s whispering voice smelled like alcohol and death, but he didn’t flinch away. He had learned better than that. “You will not raise your voice to me, and you will not try to throw yourself in front of any trucks or slit your wrists or bash your brains against the wall. Because, if you do, then Sam might have to go a few weeks without food, and maybe my hand will slip, and he’ll show up to school with a black eye. Got it?”

Dean nodded mutely, his eyes wide and numbness crawling through his veins like a poison.

“Now, as much as I have sworn your mother to take care of you when she died, I seem to have messed up along the way, as my oldest son is now a sissy faggot and will go to hell when he finally decides to let go of the gift of life we so generously gave you. It’s selfish, is what it is, taking our hospitality and our love and spitting it back into our faces. Now, if I wasn’t your father, I would let you go on ahead and throw your poor excuse for life away, but since I am, I’m gonna have to work to make you come out alright. I’m gonna fix you, Dean, cure you of this--this disease and only then can you be considered my son.”

Sam hadn’t moved one inch, but out of the corner of his eye, Dean could see the tears beginning to fall from his brother’s blue-green eyes. They were not supposed to fall, Dean though sadly. His brother wasn’t supposed to cry because of him, he was supposed to laugh and sing and dance and do whatever it was that happy, well-adjusted people did. But his brother was crying, his body shaking slightly as he desperately tried to hold in tears.

And it was all Dean’s fault.

It always came down to him and his inability to keep his brother safe. If he hadn’t come out of the closet, then he wouldn’t have put his brother in such a position. If he hadn’t told his father he didn’t really like girls as much as he liked boys, then he wouldn’t peppered with cigarette burns and bruises as dark as the night sky. If he hadn’t tried to talk to his father about attending a PTA meeting in 9th grade, Sam wouldn’t be crying as hard as he was now.

It was his fault, through and through, and he knew then that he was doomed to Hell.

John huffed triumphantly, and motioned for Sam. His younger brother walked slowly over to his father, his already shaggy hair falling down over his down-turned eyes. Sasquatch is gonna need a haircut soon, Dean thought numbly, the humor he used to glean from the thought nullified under the pain.

When Sam reached his father, John took his chin and roughly jerked it up, exposing his brother’s tear-stained eyes. He stared at them disapprovingly before whispering something in his brother’s ear. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good, as Sam’s face turned pale with fury. John gave him a warning look before nudging Sam towards the door.

Dean watched as they walked outside, but before the door shut , he heard Sam say through gritted teeth, “Get better soon, Dean.” He could still see the tears on his brother’s face even after the door closed and after the daylight dwindled down into night.

It hadn’t taken much for the old man to snap. In truth, all that the ‘good Lord’, as John Winchester referred to God as nowadays, had to do was point his heavenly hand towards Mary Winchester. Let there be cancer! It was an aneurysm, a whopper of a tumor, that burst in her brain not ten minutes after giving birth to Samuel Winchester, his moose of a brother.

The doctor had said to Dean’s father that they had never received any visitation from the late Mary Winchester about any possible symptoms, and that this was just a tragedy. He had offered his condolences, and Dean’s 4-year-old self remembered vividly how silently his father had accepted the thanks, all of the happiness gone from his voice.

Later, the drinking had jumped up to astronomical proportions, to the point where Dean even remembered thinking that something was wrong, terribly wrong. It had taken a while for him to start abusing Dean, according to the legal definition he had found for a project years later. It started with the occasional rude comment about him, the lack of support for school, and eventually, for when he was alone. He would sometimes leave for a few hours without food, and Dean had to scrounge just to get Sam fed. Rarely, he had to go to the neighbors and lie about how they ran out of baby formula so he could keep his little brother healthy.

Eventually, he would leave for days at a time, but luckily, it was when Sam was able to be fed on his own and with hard foods. Now, Dean had to feed the both of them, and it was usually at the expense of his own well-being. He would give his food to his brother, who would always act like it was the greatest thing in the world. He remembered smiling, while his stomach slowly committed mutiny against him.

He knew that their father was going to bars, picking up random women and then coming home at obscene hours with the stench of whiskey on his breath. It was then, whenever he was drunk and awake, that the beatings started.

It was usually triggered by an innocent question or comment, like “When are we going to the supermarket?” or “My stomach hurts.” His father would rear up, towering over the ten-year-old Dean, and his booming voice would make his face crumple.

He would scream at him, telling him that it was too-goddamn-bad, that he wasn’t responsible for what was going on with Dean, that he wasn’t a money machine.

And then he would hit him, sometimes in the face, sometimes somewhere where the bruises weren’t easily spotted. When he went to school, he would eventually have to say he ran into a doorknob or something at home. Usually, it was just a twist of the arm, enough to make him cry out, but if things went south, he would unload all of his anger on him, slamming him into walls and pushing him to the floor and wringing him out. Later on, when he was older and less easily broken, it would be punches or kicks to the head, the stomach, the groin, all of the areas where things were sensitive.

It wasn’t just physical, either. John would call him names, say he was as ‘useless as a sack of shit’ or that he was a ‘heathen’, ‘sinner’, ‘shithead’, or worse. He would put him down just because it was fun, and anything that Dean did was a disgrace to his mother’s memory or that he would never be good enough or that he was going to hell. When you tell an eight-year-old boy that he’ll never amount to anything and that his dead mother knew his was a disgrace, it takes a severe toll on his self-confidence.

When Sam was older, he would be included, and bruises would form like flowers over a dead man’s corpse. They were both dead inside, from years of almost-torture, and they almost never spoke to each other until their father was asleep or gone. It was those moments, the quiet ones where they could talk about everything and anything, and they could hold each other and cry and lick their wounds.

Dean would tell his brother fantastic stories as he held him, stories about killing demons and ghosts and dragons and saving the day. They were the highlights of his day, and although Sam would never tell him, they were some of his favorite moments as well.

They trudged through life in an endless cycle of hurt and small comforts, small secrets that were shared between two damaged boys who only longed for a refuge. Sam told him all about his first crush, and his test grades, and all of his friends, the kind of stuff that you would tell a father. And, in return, Dean would tell him all about his friends and offer advice that was sometimes hilariously wrong about how to better his romantic chances against the rest of the student population. Of course, it was deeper, like when Sam told him he wanted to go to Stanford in the future or when Dean finally confided in his brother that he thought he was gay. That latter secret eventually found its way to his father, and after a truly horrendous beating that involved a broken wrist and a suspected bruised rib, Sam had held Dean as he sobbed into his shoulder over how he hated his father and how he wished he could be himself and, for the first time, acknowledged that he was suicidal.

Of course, Sam had kept a very close watch on him after that. For months, he would let him outside of his sight only for a few seconds. In school, he ate lunch with him every day and sat close to the door so he could watch him when he went to drink water or go to the bathroom, considering they had almost the same classes. Sam, being the unnaturally smart kid that he was, was already taking classes meant for high school juniors as a freshman.

The only time he was unable to keep an eye on Dean was when he had study sessions, and Sam had learned that it was not a wise idea to bring him along. The last time that happened, it had ended with a drunk prank call that almost got them arrested.

It was during one of those study sessions that Dean had jumped----

He shuddered, not willing to revisit the memories. Dean could feel the pain and hurt inside of him, curling and twisting like a snake with serrated edges, digging into his stomach and gauging deep, deep wounds. It was almost unbearable, but there was a solution for that.

Dean closed his eyes, taking a deep breath as he did so. And then he just let go. He felt the world fall away as if it never existed, like smoke in the wind.

*~*~*

Castiel watched as the Winchesters left, the father practically dragging Sam with him down the hall. They were a dysfunctional group, of that he was certain, and he felt with no small amount of pity that John Winchester was the cause.

The old anger burned inside of him, unquenched and raring to be let loose. It was like a lion, but not a strong one; it was a creature that had been denied its meal, it’s bones showing through the skin. It was as black as sin, and it was angry in a desperate way.

He needed to get rid of it, or it would blow up in his face later.

Cas made a beeline for the bathroom, slipping through throngs of nurses and fluidly evading gurneys as they made their rounds. The stalls were as welcoming as the last time he had been here, but they were all empty, which was a blessing.

Taking a deep breath, Castiel let the beast out, and in his rage, he felt the impact of his knuckles against the doors of the stall nearest to him. Pain lanced up through his arm, yet he pushed on, letting his hand feel what he longed to feel. Wildly, he turned and started pounding on the tile wall, feeling the anger swell and roar. His ears were deaf to everything except for the pounding of his heart and the pumping of blood through his veins, his eyes just as blind.

Finally, after the anger was satiated, Cas swam back into reality unsteadily, the pain magnifying as he became more aware of where he was. His knuckles were bleeding, his fingers throbbing in the same manner. Both of his fists ached, but he felt strangely cathartic, as if the hurt was a panacea to his diseased soul.

After washing up in the sink, he walked back out into the noise. Taking a quick glance at the people, he saw that there was no one near the dispensary. Cas checked the clock, and sure enough, it was break time for the woman who usually sat at the desk. It was likely that she was out smoking a cigarette, given that Missouri Moseley had seen some serious shit in her days as an ER nurse. It was cathartic to her as hurting himself was to Cas.

He ignored the painful twinge of guilt as he snuck into the dispensary, taking care to walk smoothly and calmly, as if he had always been there and he was simply checking up on things. That was one thing he learned about stealing: the key was confidence, acting as though what you were doing was your business, and that acting the part was key to getting away.

Cas flitted through the shelves of medicinal bottles, eyes reading tag after tag.

Paracetamol.

Acetaminophen.

Aspirin.

Hydrocodone.

Oxycodone.

Cas took three bottles of each of the last two painkillers, knowing how valuable they were to Crowley and his cronies. They practically lived off of the stuff, and it was prime market material for people who wanted to let it all fall away for a while.

Without waiting another second, he calmly walked out of the dispensary, just in time for Missouri to walk back inside. She didn’t see him as he walked over to Dean’s room, which he thought was a stroke of good luck. Easing the door shut, he was met with a disappointing sight: Dean, staring at nothing, blank eyes glazed over.

Cas sighed, knowing already what the problem was: It was likely that John Winchester had ruined whatever happiness Dean had experienced, and it was probably going to be even more difficult for him to recover if his father continued to talk to him and make him feel depressed.

He walked over to Dean, the bottles seeming very heavy in his pocket. His feet felt like lead, sinking deeper and deeper into the linoleum floor until he felt that each step was like walking in quicksand. He found himself subconsciously counting the freckles on Dean’s tan face, tracing the lines of his jaw, and studying the deep green of his eyes as if it held the secret to all happiness in the world.

Cas sat down, right next to Dean’s hospital bed, simply admiring him. There was the occasional thought that it was slightly inappropriate to ruminate on how someone attractive was when they were in an almost comatose state. It was kind of like taking advantage of someone, wasn’t it?

But, whatever it was, he was helpless to resist it. Without even being consciously aware of it, Cas reached up and cupped Dean’s face in his own. He didn’t react, which was what Cas expected, but it hurt a little nonetheless. To be so desperate to escape this world as to shut one’s self out for hours at a time was horrible to think about, even worse because he had once been that desperate. It offered a small sanctuary in place of the devastating pain and internal suffering.

Cas, on a sudden whim, leaned forward and kissed the comatose boy on the forehead. He had never had any romantic insight, considering not one person had ever expressed interest in him. His only role models had been television, and even that was not enough. But, somehow, his mind went on autopilot, and the romantic gesture seemed almost as if it was ingrained into his very being.

“Hang in there, Dean Winchester.” he whispered before getting up and gathering his things. It was close to closing time, anyway, and he had a test tomorrow that he had neglected to study for in favor of attending to Dean’s psychological well-being. He realized, then, that that had somehow become the most important thing to him, and that was dangerous.

He was getting too close to Dean, way too close to be a friend.

And he had no idea if he wanted something more than that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, fanart and kudos and comments are appreciated! In fact, I would LOVE it if someone were to to draw or paint or create some beautiful artwork for this fic..... *WINK WINK*
> 
> Also, Dean's sexuality will remain ambiguous because it mirrors the ambiguity of my own sexuality, and also because it serves to make you guys that much more anxious to read the next chapter!
> 
> *insert evil laugh here*


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, my lovelies!
> 
> Welcome to another chapter, and as you can tell, I have run out of things to say that can be remotely witty and cool. Granted, I'm not considered very cool, anyway, but at least you guys like me!
> 
> *gives collective hug to all of you*
> 
> Anyway, here's a pretty awesome chapter that features some familiar faces.....

For some reason, Michael had deemed Saturday Castiel’s free day in terms of the hospital, which was really another excuse to study for a test he didn’t need to study for. He was capable in all subjects, and with a little effort in Math, he was able to get through the school year with relatively few B’s.

The Novak house was, per usual, quiet and oppressive. No one was on speaking terms that day, which was a surprise, given that for once in his high school career, Gabriel managed to settle down inside the edifice to Michael’s order. Usually, the short yet fiery senior would find a way to disappear conveniently and show up later with at least ten candy wrappers in his pockets and some story about how he got the principal real good this time.

Besides, he was easily the most talkative of the Novaks, by far. Anna never seemed to talk outside of a few curt ‘hello’s’ or succinct explanations about her day. College took up most of her time, and it seemed to drain all of the sister Castiel used to know. Sure, she was still cheery and happy most of the time, but it always seemed tense, as if she had no time for pleasantries when her college career was on the line.

Michael, of course, shut himself in his work so much that Castiel almost stopped considering him as family, and more of a state-assigned legal guardian who only managed to have the same last name as them.

And Cas was, well, Cas.

That left Gabriel the responsibility to fill in the silence with nonsensical chatter about practically anything: girls, candy, pranks, teachers he thought were hot, girls, and maybe more girls. Granted, no one found the heart to be interested in his conversations about the various aspects of the female species, but they didn’t want to ignore him, either. Ignoring Gabriel was like locking a two-year-old child in a room with a few hazardous instruments; something was bound to happen sooner rather than later, and none of it would be good.

Castiel was this close to actually crossing the threshold of actually putting forth the effort to study for his Chemistry test when his brother nearly blew the door off of its hinges with his gale-force winds of enthusiasm.

“S’up, little bro!” He all but yelled, prompting Cas to flinch in unpleasant surprise. His pencil was forgotten, as well as the review packet in front of him, in the event that he had to give his fickle older brother some attention.

“What d-d-do you want, G-g-gabriel?” He stammered, thrown off of his guard by the hurricane that was Gabriel Novak.

“I just wanted to come by and say hi, but if you’re gonna be Mr. Grumpy-Gills, then I might as well talk to the Gargoyle down the hall.” He said, jabbing a thumb at Anna’s door.

“She’s not a g-g-g-gargoyle.” He retorted defensively, hiding his amusement by laying his head down on his barely used desk.

“If she took the time to come out of her room once and a while instead of being perched over her laptop, I might be inclined to agree!” He yelled pointedly at Anna’s door. There was a muffled response that sounded very much like ‘screw you!’, and Gabriel grinned maliciously. He meandered into Cas’s room, stray hands brushing over anything. He wasn’t throwing things or anything, but he was misplacing things, putting them in different spots than they had been before. That was what Cas irritated most: disorder.

He wasn’t obsessive-compulsive, not by a long shot; it was just a peculiar idiosyncrasy he had. He liked things to be in their respective places and unless he wanted them to be moved, they were supposed to stay there. Cas thought it was easier to leave things where they were because it was easier to find them later.

Ignoring the petty irritation gnawing at his insides, he simply waited until he heard the sound of a body falling onto his clean, neat bed. Sighing exasperatedly, he turned around in his chair, and was met with a surprise:

Gabriel was _grinning_ at him.

It wasn’t that Gabriel didn’t smile at him now and then, as if it was a passing thing. In fact, except when he was in one of his really bad moods, he was always smiling. But the grin that was on his brother’s face right now is one that Cas usually saw when Anna mentioned a boy that she liked or when he thought that it was a good time for a prank.

Cas was scared of both of those smiles, and he had no idea which one was on his brother’s face. He didn’t say anything, and he simply waited for Gabriel to speak, as he always did eventually.

Minutes passed in awkward silence, and just when the room got as tense and stuffy as a room full of smoke, Gabriel burst.

“Soooooo…. Cassie. When were you going to tell me you wanted to do the dirty with ol’ Dean-o?”

That wasn’t what Cas expected and, unfortunately, it came at the only moment he took to take a sip of water. The spit-take was almost comical, apparently, as Gabriel burst out laughing. It took a few moments for Cas to locate a napkin or something of the sort, as well as for Gabriel to calm down.

“I d-d-don’t know what you’re talking about, Gabriel!”

“Really?” Gabriel looked skeptical, and Cas blushed deeply, knowing it would only make it seem as though it was true. But, wait. What if it was true? He had acknowledged to himself on multiple occasions that he thought Dean was attractive- no, scratch that: extremely attractive. Cas knew he had stared at him long enough to make it seem awkward even to him, and that the amount of times he chose to talk to Dean over doing other things like studying or hanging out with his family was heavily unbalanced in the former’s direction.

No. This was NOT to, as Gabriel said, ‘do the dirty’ with Dean.

He said as much to Gabriel, who looked (if possible) even more skeptical.

“Look, little bro. It’s okay if you like this guy. Hell, I did at one point, though I’m more of a cat guy than a dog guy more than anything.”

“I d-don’t know what that means.”

“It means that he likes girls more than guys, Cas.”

Anna’s voice cut through the tension, calm and kind. She was leaning against the doorframe, her red hair somehow curled as though she had gone to a formal event of some kind and her hazel eyes glinting in the light. Beyond her, Cas could see her bedroom door, which was cracked slightly, letting a little bit of light spill into the dark hallway.

“It lives!” Gabriel exclaimed in an eerily accurate mimicry of Frankenstein. Anna rolled her eyes and chucked a pillow at him that she had picked up from the floor. Then, she turned to Cas again, her eyes and expression soft but inquisitive.

“What’s this about you liking a guy?”

Cas sputtered, his stutter becoming even more apparent and inhibiting as he tried to explain that this conversation was totally wrong, and that Gabriel was putting words into his mouth. Anna, ever the saint, simply put up her hand and shushed him politely, moving to sit next to him on Cas’s bed.

“You do know it’s perfectly fine to like other boys, right? Despite what Michael thinks?”

Cas said nothing, which Anna took as a sign to continue.

“I mean, Gabe here has been playing for both teams since he was born. Remember his ‘best friend’ Samandriel?” she said, putting air quotations around ‘best friend’. Cas nodded uncertainly.

“Let’s just say that, for a while, they were a little more than friends. And let’s not forget that girl- oh, what was her name? You know, the one with the blonde hair and the sexy accent?” She frowned thoughtfully at Gabriel, trying to place a name with a face.

“OH! You mean Bela!”

She snapped her fingers at him, excitement flickering over her features.

“Yeah, Bela! She was hot, not gonna lie. I was kinda hoping when you let her go that I could have a turn with her, but she turned out to be playing for a different team--”

“G-g-guys! C-can we have one c-c-c-conversation without you g-guys talking about hot boys for one minute?!”

Cas’s outburst startled both Anna and Gabriel, and their expressions flickered to surprise for an instant before melting back into neutrality.

“Well, Gabe’s as close to pansexual as you can get, so I get it if you like boys or boys and girls or whatever. We-” she gestured at the three of them”- are an open and accepting group of teenagers, and you are free to be who you want to be.”

Gabe cut into Anna’s speech, asking “So, what are you? Gay? Bi? Pan? Asexual?”

Anna slapped him on the arm, and scolded him with an exasperated “Gabe!” Then, she looked up at him, curiosity overriding her sisterly protectiveness. She was too polite and kind to ask, but he could tell that she was dying to know as well.

Ca sat in silence for a few minutes, thinking about the question. In truth, he had never really thought about it in depth before; he had just always assumed he was gay up until now. But, upon closer inspection, he realized that if Dean was a girl or a boy, he would be just as attracted to him. Yet, he was not really attracted to many girls, if at all. He found most of the girls at his school to be vapid, ignorant and ridiculously dumb people, and that finding any one of them pretty was like bashing his brains against the wall.

“I like D-d-dean, but it wouldn’t matter if he was a g-g-g-guy or a g-girl. I mean, I’m more attracted to him as a person than his g-g-gender. Is that helpful?” Cas asked uncertainly.

Anna looked at Gabe, who shrugged. She smiled haughtily at him, which meant she knew something that he didn’t (which was quite often). He pouted as Anna flipped her hair and leaned in towards Castiel, as if she were telling a secret.

“What you probably are is demisexual. Roughly, it is more focused on emotional connections than simple sexual attraction, but if you want to be precise, it’s when a person doesn’t feel a necessarily sexual drive towards someone until they form a strong emotional bond.”

Cas pondered it for a moment before deciding that it was probably true about him. However, Dean was the only one who he had even considered to reciprocate his feelings, and all he had done up until this point was ruminate on how physically attractive he was. Though, this was usually shallow, and he didn’t find himself poring over every single detail of Dean’s body in his free time.

“You do like him, though?” Gabriel asked seriously, the smile not quite reaching his eyes.

Blushing even more furiously, Cas nodded, and both of his siblings seemed to explode. Anna practically threw herself at him, wrapping him in a bear hug that felt as if he was being smothered to death. Gabriel’s grin was almost Cheshire-Cat sized, and he thought he saw a few tears in his brother’s eyes. Anna squealed as if her favorite band had rolled into town, while Gabe patted him on the back like one of those 1950’s dads.

When they quieted back down, Cas was left slightly flustered, but happy. There was a collective sigh from all of them as they relaxed from the flurry of emotion that had occurred only moments before.

And then, they just sat there. It wasn’t awkward or tense or even rushed; no one had anywhere to be, no one had an overwhelming amount of work to do, and not one person was feeling the tremendous need to get up and leave. The Novak siblings enjoyed each other’s company in those minutes, something they had rarely done since their father had died. In truth, it had always been difficult to really connect in the monotony of the day, though each sibling had had the same thought one time or another: that they were avoiding each other in order to not be reminded of their father. It was hard on all of them, Michael most of all, but he had quickly readjusted, so quickly that sometimes, Cas had thought that he never loved their father as much as they did.

But now, in what began as one of the most terrifying moments in Castiel’s private life, none of them felt more in synch, as if they had been just like old times.

Sighing contentedly, Anna got up and walked to the door, saying “I have to get back to my work, guys. I‘ll see you for dinner.”

Gabriel, who had been mysteriously contemplative over the past few minutes, perked up, a questioning look on his face.

“Anna? Earlier, when you mentioned all of us being open and tolerant teenagers and the whole Gabe’s-a-slut-sometimes thing, you didn’t say anything about _you_.”

There was a light mischievous tone underneath his question, and Cas inwardly groaned. Leave it to Gabe to make a nice moment perverse once again. He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, taking a lollipop out of his pocket and unwrapping it noisily.

Anna turned at her bedroom door, an equally playful smile on her face. It had been a long time since Castiel had seen her smile, and he forgot how beautiful it was. Anna smiling was like staring into the sun, albeit a smaller and dimmer sun than Dean’s smile. Her teeth were perfectly white, and it was as if she had never stopped smiling at all.

“Let’s just say I’m not always alone in my room when the door is closed.”

With that, she smiled triumphantly and closed her door, leaving both Gabriel and Castiel to stare after her with similarly shocked expressions. Soundlessly, Gabriel just walked out of Cas’s room, leaving his younger brother to do his homework in flabbergasted silence. Later, when they were at dinner, Gabriel was having a hard time keeping a straight face whenever he looked at Anna, and she took advantage of this by winking at him or suggestively eating her salad.

Michael was confused, much more so when they were all stifling laughter, but he must’ve known that he wasn’t going to understand even if he asked them, as he didn’t comment on it, only offering one of his rare not-smiles. He looked like he was just about to smile, but it didn’t seem as if he could complete the simple action, and so, he settled for something just short of a grimace.

As the night wore on, each of the Novak’s (save for Michael) found that this was the best that they had felt in a long time, and they realized in their own time that this was the first time since their father’s passing that they truly felt like a family.

Cas himself was actually very pleased with how the night went, especially since this was technically the evening he ‘came out’ and he had been met with overwhelming support from his siblings. He was still content to leave Michael in the dark, considering his outspoken religious beliefs, and he only hoped his secret wouldn’t come to light anytime soon.

For now, he was happy with only Dean and Gabe and Anna knowing, because he trusted them above all else in this world. But as he brushed his teeth that evening, he realized that he would have to tell Charlie. It was his duty as a best friend to tell her everything, and he had already messed up a little when he forgot to tell her about Dean. Charlie was nothing if not persistent, and she was like an elephant; any fact or event that caught her attention was immortalized in her mind, including things that people failed to do.

Granted, she was openly lesbian, so she probably knew already, but he could never be sure. So, Castiel resolved to tell Charlie Bradbury as soon as he saw her at school.

Two days later, Cas found himself sitting in his first period classroom thirty minutes before the bell was supposed to ring, when no one was at school save for a few kids like him and the teachers, and waiting for Charlie to show up.

He had texted her that previous night, asking her to come really early to school because he had something important to tell her. It was an incredibly cryptic text, and he felt like one of the moronic characters on Pretty Little Liars who doesn’t come out and say what needs to be said and instead acts all vague and stupid to get the guy. Obviously, he had an intense hatred for that show in particular, but it didn’t matter, in the scheme of things.

He had begun to sweat even though it was just getting into the spring season, but the seasons had decided to say ‘fuck you, world’ and consequently refused to brighten and warm up. Winter still seemed to linger around the corner like that creepy guy who hangs around the general store and looks, well, creepy. What’s worse is that he doesn’t leave, and that was exactly what the weather felt like to Cas.

_Jesus Christ, where IS she?_

Cas was beginning to regret the whole decision when the girl in question practically flew in through the door, earning a wary glance from Mr. Shurley. Ignoring him Charlie swept towards Cas, a bright smile on her face, and sat down in the desk next to him. Without any further movement, she simply turned to him expectantly.

He took a shuddering breath, and leaned in, as not to draw attention.

“I have something to tell you, C-c-charlie about…. me.”

She didn’t speak, so Cas took her silence as a cue to continue.

“Well, I’ve been very c-c-c-confused about who I am recently, and G-g-god knows it’s taken years to figure this out, and I’ve never really c-considered the possibility of me not being like everyone else, and I’m pretty much rambling, aren’t I?”

Charlie smiled, nodding slightly, and he blushed even more than he was.

“A-a-anyway, I might as well say it: I think I’m gay-ish.”

There was a second of silence, then Charlie said, “I’m sorry, but what do you man, gay-ish?”

“Well, I g-g-guess I can be c-considered g-gay, but it’s a little more c-c-c-complicated than that. I d-d-don’t just like  someone because they’re attractive. I have to g-get to know a person and make an emotional c-connection before I like them like that. My sister says I’m d-d-d-d-demisexual, b-b-but I d-didn’t want to say that because I think it sounds pretentious.”

“Well, I didn’t see that coming.” Charlie said after a moment of contemplation. Cas looked up at her sharply, confusion dawning on his face.

“What I mean is that I pegged you for gay or at least bi from day one, but I certainly didn’t expect you to be demi. I’ve personally never met someone who is outspokenly demisexual, much less asexual, but I personally think it’s very…… you.”

“So, you’re okay with this?”

“I’m lesbian, Cas.” she said, enunciating every syllable as if she were talking to a child. “Of course I would be fine with it! Why would I be anything but supportive? I mean, you don’t even like the Lord Of The Rings, and I’m still your friend!”

“You g-g-gotta admit, C-charlie, that those moves are too long to watch them all in one sitting.”

“Whatever, uncultured swine. You get my point, though, right?”

Cas nodded gratefully, feeling the corners of his mouth twitching up in the beginnings of a smile. She smiled warmly back in return, pulling him in for a surprisingly-not suffocating hug. Charlie smelled like Skittles and potato chips, remnants of a weekend well spent, and he almost envied her for her appropriately-named ‘intellectual badassery’. They pulled away a few moments later, both of them feeling a lot better for it.

“So, are you down for the LARPing session in a few weeks? I could use a battle-ready mage to guard the Queen of Moondor…” Charlie said, winking playfully.

Cas smiled back at her, replying “I’ll ask my brother, but I’m sure my schedule is clear.”

“Cool!” she said, grabbing her stuff to head out to the cafeteria. She had neglected to pack or eat her breakfast, and as close as it was to cardboard, the school breakfast options were sufficient for the occasional meal. Everyone suspected that prolonged exposure to inadequately prepared pancakes and syrup from the 1980s was likely to get them killed or sick, and, as a result, no one ate the school breakfast for more than twice or three times a month.

“Hey! Maybe you could ask Dean to join us, you know, when he gets out of the psych ward!”

Cas nodded, more than startled at the prospect that Dean would be leaving the hospital in a week’s time. His physical recovery had been progressing quite quickly, and his mental state was better, if not a little scary. Almost immediately after his meeting with John Winchester, Dean had shoved all his effort into getting better, talking to Cas hours on end on what he supposed was his problem. It was mostly nonsense, stuff that he said to make sure that Cas knew he was trying. Cas doubted, though, that he was actually recovering psychologically. The meeting with his father was nothing less than traumatic in Cas’s opinion, but he hadn’t been there to see to what extent.

Cas knew it was all an act, to get out of the hospital and be himself again, but he didn’t take offense in it. It wasn’t like he was trying to escape from Cas’s company; more than once, Dean had called him ‘his best friend’, which had elicited blushes from both parties. There had been no more kisses since that day when Cas had to yell at Dean, but he found himself wishing that there would be one next time.

There was no doubt that the eldest Winchester was abusing his children, even though Sam was mostly speculation at this point. Cas was also sure that the day when he kissed Dean Winchester was when his father had threatened him; with what, he wasn’t sure of. It could’ve been anything from further beatings, use of personal information as blackmail, threats of harming Sam, or all of the above. Whatever it was, Dean’s progress was definitely born from that rather than speaking to him.

And that made him a little bit sad.

 **  
**But, more than that, it made him determined to continue looking after the damaged boy, even if he had to follow him around in school to do it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos, comments, and criticisms are appreciated! Also, can someone create some damn fine artwork for this? I would make some myself, but my artistic talents are more allocated to writing and singing and maybe dancing and maybe acting. So, yeah.
> 
> Keep reading, keep writing, and always keep a reserve container of salt for emergencies!  
> ~typewrittentragedian96
> 
> P.S. If any of you want to follow me on tumblr, my URL is the same as my profile here. Fair warning: it's pretty bare of anything interesting, save for wand drawings and nothing else. Also, I need some assistance finding a supernatural blog to follow.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the wait! Summer has just begun for me, and the last few weeks before that were spent on finals and trying not to throw myself out of the window. I was also suffering from a mild case of tumblr addiction, and a lack of want to write. 
> 
> But never fear, for my writing drive has returned, and along with the beginning of a new fic, I have updated this gem that was my first, my one, my used-to-be-only.

The following Wednesday, one of the first ones of the spring, Dean Winchester was told that, in 48 hours, he was cleared to leave the hospital.

It had been a long road to recovery, though not as long as he had expected. Granted, most of that time was spent talking to Cas, and with that being the highlight of his days, he never really thought about how bad a shape his body had been in following the attempt.

In all, he had had ten broken bones, most of them being his ribs. For a short while, he had a minor concussion (which was a miracle, considering he had jumped in front of a truck), and it didn’t take long for the gashes and road burn to subside, the former leaving pale lines across his body as if they were creases on a paper doll. Dean had no idea why, but he often ran his hand or fingers over the scars, marvelling at the difference in texture and how they were raised just centimeters above his own skin.

There was one large scar, covering his chest, that was his go-to for anxious rubbing. It was long and the most noticeable of the five major scars he had counted. He would find himself stroking it during the day absently, caught up in his own thoughts.

_That’s not the only scar you have_ , his mind whispered.

Dean frowned at the truth; there was no denying it, no lying about it. He was a scarred and maimed boy, and it didn’t matter if the scars were visible or not; it was obvious to everyone he had ever met. One glance and they would steer clear of him, rightfully so. It didn’t matter either how tolerant or open a person was; it was just an unchangeable fact, set in stone, chiseled into his heart, that not one person was truly willing to spend a minute of time with him.

Except for Cas.

A small smile grew on his face despite his efforts to thwart it, and for just a few minutes, he allowed himself to wallow in the sunshine that often pooled in his stomach with the mere mention of Castiel Novak.

Cas, with his ethereal blue eyes that peered into his soul.

Cas, with his eternally messed-up raven hair.

Cas, with his vastly improved and endearing stutter.

Cas, whose lips were softer than a thousand velvet pillows.

_Well, it’s official, Dean Winchester. You have fallen hard and fast in love with Castiel Novak._

The thought was unsurprising, given that it arrived every single day at the same time: just when the sun was about to set, the sky just beginning to unfurl its indigo blanket. Cas had once told him when he thought Dean was catatonic that his mother had told him it was the time when Heaven and Hell lay down their swords and simply stared.

He thought it was the most beautiful way to describe a sunset, though he would never tell Cas that. There was no way he could take him seriously; for one thing, he was in a hospital bed because he was tired of living a life of pain. Another thing was that it was so damn sappy and adorable and chick-flicky, and if there was one thing that Dean despised more than Jefferson Starships and his father, it was the chick-flick genre of movies.

They painted love and other things in an incredibly unrealistic light. There was no way in hell that the main love interests fall so hard in love after one meeting in a park with their dogs that somehow understood enough about human love to entangle their leashes.

Seriously.

Get a grip.

Of course, there was no shortage of thoughts in Dean’s mind that were focused on Cas. In fact, if his mind had a physical definition, there would be a large safe in the back with the words ‘Thoughts on Castiel’ painted in red. Inside, there would be all of the thoughts and emotions and feelings that Cas evoked- both decent and indecent.

Even his latest visit with his father- which had culminated in yet another one-sided Dean-shaming tirade- did little to stem the almost chronic _need_ to be near Castiel Novak. Whether he was in the room with Dean or whether he was reading aloud or whether he was just talking, he always felt unbearably hot or flushed when the boy who was somehow his friend was near.

A knock at the door brought him out of his thoughts, and he looked up to see a surprise: Sam, uninvited and alone.

His brother’s smile was radiant compared to the weak facsimiles he had offered whenever their father was present. John Winchester was not human enough to allow more than respectful smiles or maybe one positive comment without his initial consent and immediate judgement. As such, these moments when Sam was allowed to smile as wide as possible and not be censored were some of the things that kept Dean going through the day.

As well as Cas.

Dean grunted a little when Sam wrapped him in a bear hug, and his brother immediately softened his grip on him, sensing his discomfort.

“How’s life been, Sammy?” he asked once Sam had sat down in the chair.

He thought he saw Sam’s face cloud over for barely even a fraction of a second before a neutral expression covered it up.

“Fine, how’s yours?” came the deflective answer.

“Well, I’m getting out of the hospital in two days, so I’d go ahead and say that life is going to be swell.”

There was a grunt from Sam, followed by “Yeah, just wait until you get home and Dad decides to whale on you for a freakin’ hour because you weren’t there to protect me and all that shit.”

“Hey!” Dean said sharply, not liking the depressed tone that his brother used. “Enough of that, Sam. Once I get home, everything will be a little better, and we can go back to the way it used to be--”

“Seriously, Dean? The way it used to be? _That’s not possible!_ What you want to happen is impossible, and it became impossible when you threw yourself in front of that truck! Dad’s never gonna let you live that one down, and you know it! Every single hour of every single day, he will be on you like a virus, beating the shit out of you and putting you down!

I’m just angry that you don’t want to get out of here, go to Bobby’s or something, get away from Dad--”

_“I want to, Sammy!”_

Sam’s tirade was cut short at Dean’s outburst, and he looked like a kicked puppy. He regretted having to yell at his kid brother like that, so he lowered his voice to a more respectful tone.

“Don’t you think I want to leave, take you and all of our stuff and high-tail it to the next town, away from Dad and beatings and insults and abuse? I want to get out of here so bad, I almost killed myself so I could do it! I understand, trust me! I jumped in front of a truck to get away, and look how that turned out! I got locked into a hospital ward with a semi-mute nurse, and I can’t even figure out another way to leave because I’m fucking suicidal and I’m handcuffed to this fucking bed and I know that when I get home that it’s gonna be worse than any other time before!”

He was crying now, and he didn’t have the control to stop it.

“Why do I have to be this fucked up? Why is it necessary for me to be chained to a bed and not allowed to use a plastic knife? Why do we have to go home?”

Dean allowed himself to be guided into a hug, his younger brother’s arms enveloping him like a blanket. He sobbed against his chest, not even thinking about all of the snot that he’s gonna wash out later.

Sam doesn’t say anything, just sniffles as he struggles to keep his emotions under wraps. He’s done this before, so many times. When Dean comes back from a beating, when he’s bleeding and hurt and crying and breaking down right in his arms, Sam is there to hold him. And he will always be there until his brother, his hero, is better again, and when there’s no more pieces to pick up off of the floor.

Sam understood everything about Dean, save for the stuff he never told anyone. He knew that most of this was an act in Dean’s mind, that he was merely pretending to get let of the hospital as soon as possible so he could save everyone and protect Sammy until his dying breath. Dean held the weight of the world on his shoulders even when he didn’t need to, and his father knew that better than anybody.

He also knew that this was the most happy he had seen his brother in a long time. Castiel, in all of his awkwardness and his imperfections, had managed to get his brother to speak more about himself than Sam had ever been able to do by himself. The weird boy had grown on both of them, though Sam was completely aware that they had crushes on each other.

He was only thirteen, which was pretty young in the scope of things, but he was very observant, and he saw evidence of their mutual attractions towards the other as if it were in plain sight. Whenever Cas was in the room, Dean gained a certain air about him, and he looked more confident and whole and alive. Sam noticed the looks his older brother gave the blue-eyed boy when he thought he wasn’t looking, noticed the blush he got when Cas’s hand brushed his accidently, noticed the almost imperceptible way his hand reached towards the door when he left.

It was the most adorable thing he had ever seen in his life.

It wasn’t just Dean, either. Cas had plenty of his furtive glances, his blushes, and the definite sadness in his eyes when Dean ‘checked out’. Sam would leave before Cas in such cases, but he would linger just long enough to see Cas plant a kiss on his brother’s temple every single time before he left.

It was a warm feeling in his stomach when Sam saw these things, these obvious expressions of affection, but it infuriated him to no end when neither boy made a move. They were so perfect for each other, but they just circled each other like molecules that haven’t collided yet.

He was determined to ‘set them up’, as his friend Jessica referred to it. But caring for his emotionally damaged brother came first, and while he had hoped that this recovery would be somewhat quicker, Sam acknowledged that it would come with time. Despite this, he knew that getting the two boys to actually pursue each other romantically was an entirely different mission, and one that didn’t require long amounts of time to complete.

As such, when Cas showed up at 3:30 on the dot, both boys were surprised when Sam excused himself to go to the cafeteria, claiming that his stomach was going to eat the rest of his body from the inside out if he didn’t get food soon.

Ten minutes later, Sam was seated at the cafeteria, a remarkably sub-standard pudding cup in his hands, when a much older man-boy-thing sat down across from him. The only thing Sam was able to register was that he was sucking on a lollipop before the man practically screamed at him.

“SUP, LITTLE MAN!”

He winced from the magnitude of the shout, but because he was polite, he answered back, “Hi.” He hoped to sit there in silence until the guy just got up and left, but Sam had no such luck.

“So, why are you here?”

“My brother’s in here for attempted suicide.”

“Hey! My brother’s a-- whaddya call ‘em, those guys who hang out at the hospital, but they’re not doctors and they’re in high school and shit--”

“Job shadows?” Sam asked, a little incredulous at this guy’s lack of knowledge.

“Bingo!” came the answering shout, and he once again winced at the three hundred decibels this man could put out.

“Name’s Gabriel.”

“Sam.”

“Okay, Sammy--”

“My brother calls me that.” he said maybe a little too testily.

Gabriel put up his hands in a ‘dude-chill-out’ position, but he never stopped grinning at Sam-- or stopped sucking on that damn lollipop. The slurping was disgusting, almost as bad as Dean was when he was eating a slice of apple pie. It went past the point of normal enjoyment of food and crossed into highly-disturbing territory. It was getting to the levels where Sam would flash him a bitchface when the man slammed his hands on the table.

“WAIT! Your brother’s that guy who jumped in front of a truck, isn’t he?”

Sam felt anger surface in his chest, once again threatening for him to burst into flame. Usually, he had no problem keeping his anger to himself. Once it was let out, it could get ugly- and not just for him, but for anyone else involved. More often than not, it was the inclusion of his brother that he would get angry; anyone he hated mentioning Dean’s name would set him off, and there would be blood to spill.

Deciding that the best answer was none at all, Sam chucked his pudding cup away and got up quickly, not bothering to grace this loud jerkbag with a response.

Apparently, this guy couldn’t take a hint, because when Sam was halfway to Dean’s room when the guy ran past him and stopped in front of him. Annoyed, Sam moved to the right, only for Gabriel to move in the same position. He tried the left and got the same result.

Frustrated, he let out a sigh through his nostrils, and Gabriel, sensing his time would be cut short, talked quickly.

“Look, I’m a friend of Dean-o’s, okay? I know him from school, and I think he’s a pretty swell guy. I actually find him to be pretty fuckin’ hilarious, and that’s a high compliment coming from the King of Awesome here.”

His grin was almost reciprocated, but Sam reminded himself that even though this guy was apparently his friend, he was a bag of dicks, and he told him so to his stupid, arrogant, douchey face.

Whistling, Gabriel said, Well, dang, Sasquatch. And here I thought were were friends.” He smiled again, and Sam had to resist the urge to barf.

Then his face got serious, a stark contrast from the joking guy from before. Sam was aware that this guy was young, definitely a senior judging by his aura of superiority, but now, his eyes were tired and his face was pale. He looked as though he had had many sleepless nights, and that they were clearly taking a toll on him.

“My brother is the guy who’s being forced to talk to him, you know. And I don’t really know about your bro’s sexual preference and all ‘cause that’s a private thing, but I know my brother, and the way he looks at him, it’s like he forgets the world around him and that Dean’s the only thing there that he can see. Trust me, I’ve seen it enough times that it’s kind of making me sick. And I know you see it, too.” he added, seeing Sam’s somewhat dubious expression.

“Now, I’m not usually the one for match-making- usually, it’s me who gets match-made. But I’m tired of the secret glances and the adoring smiles when they’re not even together yet. So, given we’re both the protective brothers who would do anything to make our brothers happy, I suggest we push them in the right direction.”

Gabriel’s hands waved about when he spoke, and Sam had to duck a few times to avoid getting hit, but when he finally stopped talking, he thought over what he had said.

It was definitely true, that Dean and Cas had something going on, even if it wasn’t truly there yet. The looks were proof enough of that, and add up the happiness he saw on his brother’s face every time he came and the significant improvement of his psychological well-being, and it was clear to Sam that Castiel was very important to Dean- and, by extension, him.

Even if Dean fooled himself by thinking his improvement was all an act to get home sooner, they all knew it was real, and that Cas had been the catalyst to his brother’s recovery.

“Fine,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “But a word of caution: my dad is not okay with the whole bisexuality thing my brother has going. To him, it’s sacrilege to my mom’s memory. If he finds out that his son is currently enjoying the company of another boy, then all hell’s going to break loose.”

Gabe nodded somberly, and said, “Yeah, I know someone like that. Our older brother, Michael, isn’t the most liberal person on the block- actually, he’s the most conservative, close-minded, bag of dicks that I have ever known. So, I get what you’re saying about secrecy, and I think we can pull it off.”

He stuck out his hand to shake, and Sam took it, not realizing that Gabriel would pump that thing harder than a crank-generator that’s on the fritz. It felt like his arm was going to fall off when the older boy finally let go of his hand, and he let it fall to his side limply.

“So, if this is going to be a secret operation, we need codenames. I call ‘King of Awesome’, and you shall be ‘Samsquatch’.”

“No, I won’t.” Sam said, back pedalling to Dean’s room.

“Fine,” Gabriel yelled. “How about Moose?”

“NO!” Sam yelled back before slipping into Dean’s room.

The resulting ‘Come on!’ was muffled through the door, but having heard it nonetheless, Sam grinned and turned to Cas and Dean, who were looking at him strangely. They were sitting apart from each other, and to anyone else, it would’ve seemed like it was just another meeting between friends. But to Sam, who was very observant, the atmosphere was just too tense for it to have been considered normal.

For one thing, Dean’s eyes were still a little puffy, as if he had been crying after Sam had left, and there were significantly more tissues on the trolley next to his bed than twenty or thirty minutes before. He still looked healthier than he had been when he had been admitted, and he could see his brother’s arm muscles still stretching the fabric of the sleeves.

Another thing was that Cas had the trademark deer-in-headlights look that so often came with being caught in the middle of something that was potentially embarrassing. Given the rumpled sheets and the slightly messed up hair, Sam guessed that the two had been kissing for a few minutes before Sam walked in.

Still, he felt no shame at having disrupted the two boys’ make out session, considering how much he liked Cas and that he was having a really positive effect on Dean. His recovery was coming along fast, and once he was out of this hospital, they would have to find a way for Cas to keep being around Dean, to ensure that he not only continued living and didn’t attempt suicide again, but also that they get to know each other better.

So, Sam grabbed his backpack, gave Dean a hug, and as he walked by Cas, he said loud enough for both of them to hear, “Now, you take care of my brother, and if you guys don’t get married in a year or so, I’m going to run you over with the Impala.”

The snotty little brother he was, Sam wished he had brought a camera to capture the perfection of Dean’s shocked face and Cas’s slightly terrified expression, but he enjoyed the moment anyway.

 **  
**It was the start of Operation: Matchmaker, and he was sure it wouldn’t be the last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so the real story begins.....
> 
> After this, real life comes along, and I can't lie when I say that I may have a very unpleasant surprise for Dean in the future. *wrings hands maniacally*
> 
> Don't worry, it won't be for a while, but it will happen.
> 
> I tried so hard with Gabriel! Please tell me if I fell flat in his characterization, even though he was in the last chapter a lot... Anywho, I shall try valiantly to update as soon as possible!
> 
> Keep reading, keep writing, and always keep a container of salt by for emergencies!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here's the first time I have ever used a trigger warning, but pay attention: thinly veiled reference to parent/child incest and rape/non-con elements in the following chapter. Remember when I said things were gonna get shitty for both Cas and Dean? Here's one of many things for Dean that make me sad to write.
> 
> Honestly, I have no respect for any situation like this, and I sincerely hope that all those assholes and perverts get their just desserts. I doubt even Gabriel, in all his humorous self, would give any pause before annihilating these people. 
> 
> But, enough with the heavy talk. I don't want to bog you down too much, but this is a very depressing chapter. I'm sorry, and please don't murder me.
> 
> *hands out industrial-sized container of tissues and monumental cartons of ice cream."
> 
> You're gonna need these....

Dean tried to take deep breaths, calming ones meant to stave off any fear and worry and nausea or any combination of the three.

Today was the day.

The day he finally freed himself from this wretched hospital and reentered the life of the living. School was waiting, his job at Bobby’s was waiting, and his home was waiting. He hated to admit it, but that last item was the most important of all; his life depended on how he acted in the presence of his father. No doubt his vigilance over Dean would be increased tenfold, considering he cared about him.

Of course, it was an ironic sort of caring; he wanted Dean to be happy and healthy so he could protect his brother and be beaten at least twice a day for inconsequential errors that were impossible to fix.

Still, even though he hated it and wished he could get out of it in any way possible, Dean needed to be home; every single moment that he wasn’t there, Sam’s chances of getting out mostly unscathed dipped lower and lower.

The kid wanted to get into Stanford, to get married, to have a perfectly happy home life away from John Winchester. Dean shared those dreams, but he knew he was going to give up his horrible excuse for a life away in order to help him achieve those dreams.

Him and Dad were going to have to work multiple jobs each just to keep his tuition up, and as such, there was a likely chance that Dean would be scarred forever for multiple beatings and that his self-confidence (which was already alarmingly low) would dwindle until he wasn’t really existing anymore and that he was just a punching bag and a tool for his father to use.

He didn’t want this future, but that was the way it had to be.

Without it, Sam would never be able to escape this hellish life. And if self-sacrifice was the only price to pay for his freedom, then Dean Winchester would pay it in full, up front, and with dignity.

He sat on his bed, a slab of granite enshrined in flimsy sheets and almost immovable blankets that felt like those lead sheets you wore to avoid radiation poisoning. He ran his hand over them ,marvelling at their roughness and the way that the almost-obnoxiously blue shade glinted in the light of a new day.

Normally, Dean wasn’t sentimental at all, much less so towards most inorganic items, but today, he was leaving after a three month stay and recovery for an attempted suicide, so forgive him a little if his emotions were out of wack.

He knew he needed to toughen up before he got home, or else that would be the number one thing on John Winchester’s Beat The Boy For list.

The door opened silently, and he turned towards the familiar smell of fabric softener and books and smiled. “Hey, Cas.”

Castiel stuttered out a definitely improved ‘hello’, and without even thinking about it, Dean went in for a hug. He felt Cas stiffen against him before relaxing into the embrace and holding him in a definitely platonic way. They had not pushed what they had- which was still a mystery to both boys- past kissing when Dean was emotionally broken, and any other time, it was respectful speaking without touching. Even if they liked each other, the hospital had rules, and Cas was the goody-two-shoes who had to follow them. It was adorable how much he like rules, but he never said that to his face.

They parted after a moment, and Cas took in Dean’s hopeful eyes and smile.

“Tod-d-day’s the d-day.” Cas said cheerily, hoping it disguised how sad he was that he had to leave.

“You bet it is. I can’t wait to get home to Sammy.” Dean said, hoping Cas couldn’t see through the blatant lie.

Neither of them were necessarily happy that he was leaving, but they had a cautious optimism that they would see each other more than they had before the accident, especially since someone needed to help Dean catch up with school. Missing three months of school had be fun until the reality hit that he needed to do a shit ton of schoolwork.

Cas in particular found himself hoping more and more that he would see Dean often, which he credited to their friendship more than his quickly growing crush on him. He wished that he could skip straight into a relationship with this boy he had grown to like, but he was aware it might not ever happen. Dean was still in the closet, technically, and there was the factor of John Winchester that threw a wrench into the works.

Secretly, Dean wanted to go further as well, but his life was dominated by the fear of John Winchester, and the almost obsessive need to protect Sam from him at all costs.

Nervous excitement built up in his chest as 12:00 neared, and Dean could barely keep still. When he got nervous or excited, he had a tendency to putter around and fidget with just about anything in reach. His fingers needed to be busy, a side effect of working around cars for years, and Cas watched with no small amount of amusement as Dean rearranged the clipboard that held his medical information, emptied and refilled the syringes drawer, and smoothed down the sheets every five minutes or so.

“You’re a little nervous, aren’t you?” Cas said cheekily, and Dean rewarded him with a light glare. He knew he couldn’t be truly mad at him, so it wasn’t as severe as it could’ve been.

A few minutes from 12:00, Pam came into the room, noticeably cheery. She had a big bounce to her step, and the way she smiled at both boys made them slightly nervous. Sure, she had a right to be happy that her patient for the past few months was leaving and was not going to try and kill himself any time soon, but this was more of a happy-that-my-secret-plan-succeeded smile. To be safe, neither boy asked about why she was happy.

“Well, Mr. Winchester?” She said, looking at her watch. “I believe you are now officially released from the hospital following your father’s signing of the forms at the front desk.”

Dean nodded, his face paling a little at the mention of his father. Pam smiled sympathetically, and squeezed his shoulder, adding, “Don’t worry, Pretty Boy. I gave him plenty of forms to sign, so I got you a few minutes.”

He nodded, looking more grateful, and Pam put her hands in her pockets, but not before pointing a finger threateningly at Dean.

“Remember what I said: you are not invincible. You can’t protect everyone, so don’t take it so personally. Now, what are you going to say when you’re feeling depressed or suicidal?”

“I’m a kick-ass sonuvabitch.” He said with a grin, and Pam gave him a high-five. She ripped a sheet of paper from her legal pad and scrawled a series of numbers on it before handing it to Dean.

“That’s my phone number. Call me if anything’s even the remotely bit fishy.”

Dean nodded stoically, and she gave him a hug before giving Cas an undecipherable look as she left the room.

They stood there for a while, the awkwardness beginning to rear up like a wave, and just before it could crest and smash down on the both of them, the door opened once again to reveal John Winchester, a frown on his face and the characteristic red eyes of a drunk. Cas had to resist the urge to spit in his face on the grounds that it might anger him, and he had already had enough experience with angry drunks. Years of depression and suicidal tendencies had been his companions, and he had a scar on his back that was a testament to the reign of Chuck Novak.

“C’mon, boy. Let’s go.” John said, all trace of paternal love nonexistent in his voice. Cas watched as he saw Dean’s confidence and vivacity wilt until he seemed almost inhuman. His shoulders straightened immediately, and his face hardened, all traces of relaxation and joy disappearing. The Dean he had come to know (and maybe love) had been eclipsed, overtaken by the hard-edged shadow soldier that now stood in his place.

This was Dean at home, Cas realized. This was what Dean wished he never was.

He watched with an overwhelming sense of futility as John Winchester walked out of the door, Dean following close behind. He noticed with a small sense of sadness that Dean’s back was almost unnaturally straight, like a soldier in front of a commanding officer, being force to do what he no longer wanted to do. They left Castiel standing in the hospital room, with the bed with its uniform sheets and overwhelming emptiness.

He hoped that the almost sorry glance that Dean gave him just before the door closed was not a hallucination, and that Dean was still inside of that facsimile his father made him into.

*~*~*

The rumbling of the 1967 Chevy Impala on the road was peaceful, a direct contrast to the storm that was currently roiling inside of Dean’s chest. He couldn’t tell if he was more afraid or defiant or confident or weak or anything. This kind of ambiguity had been a constant before he jumped in front of that truck and, by extension, before he met Castiel Novak.

As he took in the same smells he had always smelled yet somehow overlooked, Dean tried to forget that his alcoholic, deadbeat father did not sit beside him, eyes red-rimmed and puffy from his good friends Jack and Jose.

Instead, he inhaled deeply, smelling leather and lemon, the air freshener still hanging limply from the rear-view mirror like one of those hanging bodies in war-torn countries. It was as if the freshener had tried valiantly to make the interior of the car smell more like fruit than alcohol, that it tried to make it seem happier but made it failed along the way. It hung kind of limply there, and Dean thought that it was fitting that he was riding in the company of an almost dead cardboard cutout shaped like a lemon.

Like it, his life was hanging by very thin threads, and he didn’t know how long he could hold on--

No! He couldn’t think like that, not when Sam still needed protecting, needed comfort when he had been weeks without it. Dean shuddered at the thought of him suffering at the hands of his father, and it only steeled his resolve.

He needed to be home, it didn’t matter if he liked it or not. Without Dean there, Sam could die, and all chances of a bright future would shatter.

He could feel his father sitting beside him, haphazardly moving the car about the empty roads. Despite the fact that he should’ve been worried that John was probably drunk off of his ass and that he was still driving a car with a young passenger, Dean somehow wasn’t the least bit scared, though more so because he had become numb than that he felt safe.

There was no day when he felt safe in the company of John Winchester.

Dean didn’t know how long he had been thinking, but when he felt the jerk of the car stopping, he sat up a little straighter. Fear lanced through his chest as he saw the unfamiliar territory. Tall grass waved slightly in the afternoon breeze, and when he turned around, that was all he could see. The sun glinted through the windshield, and he suddenly became aware of John’s hand on his shoulder, grounding him.

John was looking at him, a sadistic grin on his face. Up close, Dean could see the beginnings of a beard from days of not shaving, and the slightly yellow pallor to his skin. His eyes peered out at him, almost red orbs that glinted from underneath dark eyebrows and similarly tan skin. He had to recoil at the smell of his father’s breath, as if something had crawled deep inside of his body and died there, leaving its own remains to fester and bloat like a dead man in water. His teeth were almost yellow, and the sight of spittle in his mouth made him want to gag.

But he had been trained for moments like these, when he had to keep still or risk further injury. So, Dean sat still.

He sat still even though he felt his father’s hand travelling further down his arm, past his elbow and crossing onto his leg from his wrist.

He sat still as John’s hand rubbed up and down on his bad leg, and he sat still as his father cupped his face in his other hand and made him look straight at him.

He sat still when John said, “You know what to do, boy.”

At that moment, everything was in perfect clarity. Every molecule in the world swam before his eyes, and if he tried hard enough, he could pick out the dust particles on the seat beside of him. The sunlight seemed sharper and clearer, and the crickets outside chirped melodies Dean could not fathom.

He beheld in one perfect moment, his father’s diseased soul. It was a sick, maimed thing, a bruised purple blob that seemed to leak out of his father’s eyes and twisted grin, and spreading over all of Dean and the car and the world, it seemed.  It was spotted with black, like the lung of a smoker, and it felt greasy against Dean’s own soul.

And, in the last miniscule nanoseconds of the impossibly real moment, he felt Cas’s presence in his heart, a bright spot of golden white that pulsed rhythmically. He took great care to push it down, away from the reaches of his father’s diseased core, and with it, he took his consciousness.

He had done this before, in moments like these when he didn’t want to comprehend the world around him. Dean had an inkling in his head that this was entirely unhealthy and that he should be confronting his problems and emotions rather than shutting himself away, but it was all he could do in the case of his father’s perversions.

He had heard from others that his eyes became glassy when he was like this, in his Sanctuary, as he had come to call it. He wouldn’t remember everything about the time between when he sank beneath his mind’s surface and when he breached it once again, but vague feelings and shattered memories would poke around his head, and Dean could usually piece together what had happened.

The calm velvety feel of his head was comforting as he felt dulled stabs of pain from his body, a thing that moved on its own, its movements borne of a vicious, repetitive cycle that Dean wished never existed. It was here that he held the warmth of Castiel Novak close to his heart, and took it in in all of its glory.

He knew Cas had once been damaged, no matter how much he tried to hide it. His stutter was one of those things that he could never change, a memorial to a time when something horrible happened and the fact that he survived. The two scars on his arms were also indicative of a great struggle, not unlike his own.

But even so, they did not weigh that beautiful boy down. No, unlike Dean, Castiel rose above everything life threw at him ,ready to face new problems and challenges as if they were all easy to beat.

Cas did not wear his scars like a victim.

He wore them like a veteran, a proud one.

And for that, Dean Winchester both envied and loved Castiel Novak.

*~*~*

The world slowly swam into focus, like water settling from a stone being dropped into it, the ripples slowly fading into glass. Dean took in the brown wood of the walls first, horrible walls that were in desperate need of some care. The carpet came next, a coarse gruel ocean that prickled his bare legs. Finally, the sound came back, and he beheld the whirring fwump-fwump-fwump of the ceiling fan.

And he knew he was home.

Dean realized that he was laying down on something warm, something that felt like flesh. When he peered up, he saw Sam’s face looking down at him, set in stone and jaw clenched. There was a bruise forming on his cheek, no doubt from John Winchester, but he looked otherwise fine.

A memory bubbled up to the surface, one from only a year ago, on a night like this one. He remembered it clearly, and Dean doubted it would ever leave him.

It had been a horrible night all around.

For starters, neither Dean nor Sam had had anything to eat for two days that wasn’t rotten or close to it. Of course, no matter how much he pleaded, Sam always got the most food; he was their father’s ‘pride and joy’, and he needed to be healthy so he could be shown off like a prized pony. _Not just smart, but healthy too!_ , his father would crow in his mind, like some sort of slave auctioneer.

Also, he had come back completely drunk and possibly high, as Dean suspected. It was nothing close to marijuana, that was a calming drug- he had learned that in health class, the same day he had learned about rape protocol.

He had deliberately gone to the bathroom when that slide had popped up.

He couldn’t remember a lot about what was said, but whatever it was, it had earned him a beating so horrible that he remembered it in almost grisly detail. That was one memory even retreating to his Sanctuary couldn’t erase, couldn’t dull. It was a flashbulb memory, or so his psychology class had taught him- a memory created in a moment of high emotional stress that is very vivid and lucid.

After enduring countless punches and kicks and insults and then more kicks (this time, with steel-toed work boots), Dean had been shoved into his and Sam’s room, and he had collapsed into his brother’s form, sobbing like a baby.

“Everything _hurts,_ ”, he remembered saying over and over to Sam, who held him and cried silently. They had learned from very early on that crying was a noise that John hated hearing, and extra punishment was the verdict of the man who proclaimed himself judge, jury, and executioner.

Afterwords, when the night had fallen silent, and the lights in the den had winked out and the shuffled footsteps of their father disappeared into his room, Sam and Dean talked.

There wasn’t really anything to it, their conversations. Sam would usually have something to say about someone in his grade, someone he didn’t like, and Dean would patiently listen as he described his suffering by having to _deal_ with this kid every single day. He would never tell his brother off, never try to make him seem stupid by pulling the ‘I’m currently being abused physically, emotionally, and sexually by my own father’ card, because what good would that do?

They were in this together, and no matter what, a soldier does not deign himself better than his peers.

They had then prattled on about nothing, dreams and goals for the following day, memories that made them smile or laugh or cry or all of the above, and sometimes, deep confessions about things they could never talk about with anyone else.

That was the night when Dean came out.

“I think I’m bi.” he remembered saying to Sam, his head bowed. It was a quiet exclamation, not so much as a matter-of-fact statement as a whispered confession, as if he had done something wrong.

“What’s that?” Sam had asked, ever the curious one. Seriously, if he didn’t become a lawyer…

“It’s when I like girls and boys, not just one or the other.” Dean had said, his voice barely a whisper over the fan and the chirping crickets outside.

There was a moment of silence as Sam pondered this new development, and Dean remembered being so anxious that he almost forgot to breathe. His heart had been pounding so hard, he thought that it would explode and he would die right here and now, waiting for an answer that could either condemn or praise him.

“I like boys and girls, too.” Sam said, not really comprehending it.

“It’s not just a friend thing, Sammy, it’s-it’s-”

“Like sex?”

“Jeez, Sammy, where’d you hear that? Dad? Me? Who?” Dean had been caught off-guard, that his little brother, only twelve, knew about sexual intercourse. Sure, they might’ve learned it in school a little, but Dean himself hadn’t known all about sex until his last year of middle school, though that was kind of late.

“TV.” Sam said simply,shaggy brown hair almost touching his eyebrows. He peered out at him innocently, almost as if to he hadn’t answered the most dreaded question in the entire universe to his brother, who was, by no means, promiscuous.

Dean remembered sighing and saying, “Yes, like that. Seriously, what are they playing on TV these days?”

Sam looked at him for a moment with those innocent green eyes full of hope and suffering, of love and fear, of everything a kid is and what he shouldn’t be, and said, “That’s cool.”

Dean remembered a gigantic weight, like an elephant had been sitting on his chest and carrying two nuclear bombs and a grand piano, lifting from his chest and feeling as if he was full of air. He wanted to jump around and skip and sing, but he knew what would come.

Dean knew how his father would handle it when it came out of the bag, he knew his stance on it already from hours of drunkenly affirmations as some Southern white man who was too old to be taken seriously went on and on about the ‘gay threat’, the ‘gay agenda’, the ‘demonic behaviors’. He knew all of that, besides his father’s very frequent use of the word ‘faggot’, or its harmless derivatives: ‘fairy’, ‘man-whore’, ‘pussy boy’, and ‘cocksucker’.

He knew, and still he had wanted to come out, hoping that this one act of love and compassion and honesty would be the catalyst for his father’s change.

But that was not the way of John Winchester, and the rest was history.

Dean didn’t know when he started crying softly again, but suddenly he was, and Sam was crying too. It was just like old times, which seemed miles and miles and miles away because of his suicide attempt. All of that seemed to be farther back than just a few months and maybe a year, but time was different around John Winchester; it was more vindictive, cruel, and slow.

**  
And so, for what seemed like the first night in centuries of peace, Dean Winchester fell asleep crying, and in pain.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. I'm sooo sorry. 
> 
> Please forgive me for the horrible things I have done.
> 
> Now, I would ask for fanart once again, but if someone gave me fanart of this specific chapter, I don't know if I would be happy about it. I tore my heart into pieces writing this, and this wasn't even as bad as it could've been, if I had no respect for Dean or you readers.
> 
> Don't worry, my readers: the next few chapters will be very, very, very bare of most angst this heavy, and will be the usual 'Dean-is-depressed-and-emotionally-constipated" and 'Cas-needs-to-think-long-and-hard-about-his-situation-with-Crowley" stuff.
> 
> Keep reading, keep writing, and always remember to keep a container of salt nearby for emergencies!  
> ~typewrittentragedian96


	10. Chapter 10

A week or so after having been released from the hospital, Castiel was very surprised to see Dean Winchester standing in the doorway of Mr. Shirley’s English classroom, looking very out of place and vulnerable. It was a look that he did not like, not on Dean, who deserved to be smiling and laughing and practically running to catch up with his friends.

Either way, it took no time for some of the others already in the class to notice. The small conversations dwindled into awkward silence, broken only by the slight influx of sound from the still-teeming hallway. They sat like demonic judges, taking in his rumpled green shirt, his somewhat-baggy jeans, his tired eyes. They seemed to weigh him, poke and prod him, absorbing all of his flaws and his imperfections, deeming him unworthy of verbal response.

In return, Dean Winchester looked back at those who stared openly, and he made no moves and no sounds. It was not a position of defiance, Cas knew; it was one of terror, of confusion, and one of mounting anxiety. His face had already paled considerably, and he had no idea how to react. How does one react after coming back to school from the hospital as a result of an attempted suicide?

Cas had felt it before, endured the awkwardness laced with despair, and it had been a very hard transition for him. He could imagine how hard it was right now for Dean, who was used to hospital beds and drunken fathers.

So, he extended the metaphorical hand, the one he had been offered by Charlie, who had not yet arrived.

“D-d-dean! Over here!”

Dean’s head jerked over to the source of the noise, and Cas tried to ignore the fluttery feeling in his stomach he got when his friend’s face melted from apprehension to relief. He beckoned him over to an empty desk, on his other side.

Dean smiled softly and as he walked over to the desk, Cas noticed with a small amount of disappointment that he was still limping on his left leg.  It was not as pronounced as it had been at the hospital, in the beginning of his recovery, but he still wished that it had disappeared by now.

He didn’t miss the hiss of pain as Dean lowered himself into the seat gingerly, but Cas knew better than to bring it up right now.

“Hey, Dean.”

“Hey, Cas.”

There was silence for a second as they both acclimated to being together in school, which was an entirely different environment than a hospital. Sure, there was still a lot of self-pity and no one actually wanted to be there, but at least the hospital offered a sense of privacy. There was no place in a high school where anything discrete could be

“Still g-g-got a limp, huh?” Cas said, deciding to speak on it.

Dean looked ruefully down at his left leg, as if a glare could fix the problem, and said, “Uh, yeah. Doc said it would take a while to heal and all, and that I had to keep it out of a lot of physical stress to avoid permanent damage or something like that.”

Cas nodded silently, thinking that that was what his brother would say, of _course_. The thing was that he often forgot Michael existed at all, save for his looming presence at the hospital, which was actually pretty easy to ignore when he was around Dean. It wasn’t as if he was going to win

‘brother of the year’, and he certainly wasn’t going to continue to be a constant presence in any of the Novaks’ lives soon; once Cas graduate high school and applied to a college far away from Lawrence, Michael would just be a figment of the past, a specter of the life he hoped to take into his own hands.

“How’s Sam?” he asked, trying to keep the friendly conversation alive.

“He’s good. He won’t let me out of his sight, though. This is the only class he doesn’t have with me, so it’s nice to have a little bit of privacy now and then.”

“That’s nice.” Cas said as Mr. Shirley walked into the class. The whole time that he and Dean had been talking, the classroom had been slowly filling up with students, and if he tried hard enough, Cas could guess who everyone was and where they would sit.

Charlie herself came in right on Mr. Shirley’s heels, bouncing red hair like a will o'the wisp, tempting people’s eyes to the rare spot of color in a room of dark and light hair. Today, she was wearing a red Star Trek shirt and rolled up blue jeans, drawing plenty of attention to her almost neon yellow Converse.

She plopped down in her seat next to Cas, then leaned across from him to hold out her hand for Dean to shake. Cas had to move back to avoid being smacked in the face with said hand, and Charlie was almost completely in his lap, an awkward position neither of them truly cared about.

“I’m Charlie, openly lesbian nerd, Star Trek enthusiast, and full-time LARPer.”

Dean took her hand gently, shaking it just enough not to yank her arm out of her socket, and grinned back at her. “And I’m Dean Winchester, closeted bisexual who likes fast cars and frisky men and women. Also, you know you are wearing a red shirt, right?”

Charlie nodded, giving him a look that said, _Duh_!

“You know that, besides Uhura and a handful of other characters, every single one of the crew who wears a red shirt dies all the time?”

The look of pure joy and delighted shock on Charlie’s face was one of the greatest things Cas had ever seen, and she let out a pure fangirl squeal that drew more than a few eyes. Of course, while Cas flushed in embarrassment, Charlie simply beamed at Dean and whispered, “He’s a keeper” in Cas’s ear before saying, “You just got the Charlie Bradbury Seal of Approval, young Padawan!”

“I’ll hold it close to my heart,” Dean said lightly. “By the way, what the heck is LARPing?”

“Here we go again,” Cas said sarcastically at the same time as Charlie said, “It’s the greatest thing ever!”

As the class progressed, Charlie gave Dean the full lowdown on Live-Action Role-Playing, or more colloquially known as LARPing. Basically, groups of men and women get together on weekends or for special events planned in advance to don pretty realistic pieces of armor or clothes or even robes in some cases and act out games as if they were playing a real-life version of Dungeons and Dragons. There are usually a few hubs that act as fictional kingdoms (for example, The Kingdom of Moondor, Charlie’s kingdom) where semi-realistic things happen and where players can meet up and get ‘quests’.

If they encounter other rival kingdoms out in the neutral areas, players initiate battles and throw beanbags at other players while saying specific commands, like casting a fire spell or narrating sword duels as they fight.

There are gamemasters that determine the rules, and as well as following said rules, all conversation and interactions are done completely in character, a rule that is stringently followed. Of course, different groups use different words to signal a pause in play, allowing others to speak as their normal selves, and then could resume play when the need was met.

Charlie herself was part of a big LARPing group in Lawrence, and as a matter of fact, she was the Queen of Moondor, her respective kingdom. Needless to say, Dean was awed and a little scared at the same time. It seemed completely silly and more than a bit ridiculous, but under those superficial judgments, Dean was not afraid to admit that he was fascinated- and that he kind of wanted to try it.

“Well, we have a big battle coming up soon in one of the closest venues that’s maybe an hour away, so if you want to join in and help protect your Queen of Moondor, than, by all means, call me.”

Class had finished, and Charlie, Cas, and Dean were walking down the crowded hallway, almost shouting over the multitude of noise that assaulted all of their ears. In a sense, the crowd and the commotion was a calming influence on all of them, as if being immersed in a pool of continuous, uninterrupted sound was a panacea to the stress of their real lives, and that they were separate from their usual selves.

It was one of the few things Castiel did not hate about high school.

Lunch had arrived, and they all agreed to meet up under the oak tree just outside of the cafeteria. Not a lot of students were allowed to leave campus to get lunch from any number of the fast food installations in Lawrence, and even fewer were allowed to eat anywhere else than the cafeteria. But, of course, as soon as it was available, people started sneaking out into the courtyard and settling under trees, and before the school board knew it, pretty much every single student had eaten outside at least once. So, having exhausted all efforts by placing detention on such students, as well as ‘severe’ talks with them about bending the rules, the school board begrudgingly allowed students the option of eating outside, and thus, here they were today.

Sam joined them in their march to the oak tree, and Cas could hear Sam whispering to Dean intensely, no doubt asking him all about his first day back, and if anyone needed an ass whooping, to which he knew Dean would reply that Cas was here, and that no one needed to get their ass whooped by a string bean like him.

They reached the oak tree quickly, having mastered the art of making haste without running, and with an almost collective sigh, they settled down to eat. While they ate, Charlie chattered on about LARPing and other nerd stuff, with Cas interjecting a few of his own opinions. Dean (and, by extension, Sam) fit in surprisingly well in the group, but he couldn’t help but notice Sam watching Dean out of the corner of his eye at almost all times.

**  
  
**

He understood perfectly why he was keeping such a close eye on him: Dean had been released from the hospital only a week ago, and by all accounts, he was still suicidal. Besides, it had been during a time when Sam wasn’t paying attention that Dean had jumped in front of the truck. Cas could understand; Gabriel had made sure that Cas was not let anywhere near pill bottles, sharp knives, or anything resembling rope for at least a month.

“So, what kind of music do you like, Cas?”

The subject had changed to music choice, and it took Cas a minute or two to actually comprehend what Dean was asking.  Of course, it was pretty hard anyway with Dean sitting in that one spot with a sunbeam poking through, making him look like some kind of benevolent angel watching over them all.

“Uh… I like c-c-classical music.”

Dean snorted good-naturedly, and Sam perked up a little, a smile growing on his face.

“What kind of composers do you like? Vivaldi? Tchaikovsky?”

“I prefer C-c-camille Saint-Saens over Beethoven, but the Moonlight Sonata 5th Movement is sublime. And Danse Macabre is my g-g-go-to song when I g-get d-d-d-depressed.”

Everyone turned solemn then, faces drawn and eyes turned down. The birds chirping and the muted sounds of laughter drifted on the air, but the silence was broken by Cas, who was not going to let his admission of depression affect anything.

“What kind of music d-d-do you like, D-d-dean?”

“Mullet rock” Sam answered immediately, at the same time as Dean’s “Ol’ fashioned rock and roll.” He glared at Sam, who punched him in the arm and said, “That’s all he ever plays in the car, no matter what time of day it is. It’s all Metallica and Kansas and Asia, all the time.”

“Hey! Those are the classics, and you don’t diss the classics. Besides, driver picks the music---”

“--shotgun shakes his cakehole.” Sam finished glumly, waving his hands in the air in exasperation. Dean nodded gravely before giving his brother what Cas could only assume was the worst noogie in the world, inferred from Sam’s terrified squawks and struggling. Charlie and Cas laughed, and they only laughed harder when the younger Winchester escaped from his brother’s hold, only to discover that his long hair was messed up and sticking up all over the place from static electricity. Dean was almost in tears, wriggling on the ground as if someone was currently tickling him.

The lunch bell rang ten minutes later, and the little group traipsed back inside, stomachs sore from laughing and dried tears on their cheeks. Sam and Dean were shoving each other playfully, and Charlie was practically skipping through the halls.

Cas was in the middle of a laugh himself when he felt eyes on his back. He turned his head, and was met with a very unpleasant sight: a greasy haired boy staring him down from the boiler room door.

“Hey, Cas. What’s wrong?” Dean asked, seeing his friend-but-maybe-more-than-a-friend’s face pale considerably. He followed his eyes to a large metal door, rusted with age, but then the crowd had swallowed up whomever he was looking at and then Cas was looking at him with the fakest smile on his face.

“Nothing.” he said, plastering over his discomfort, and for just a second, Dean wondered if he should push it further. But he realized that maybe Cas was holding back as well from pushing him further, asking him more questions, and he decided to give him the same treatment.

“Cool.” he said, and if anyone in the crowd saw Dean Winchester’s hand in Cas’s, then no one would say anything.

*~*~*

The boiler room was dark, just as dark and as hot as the last few times he had been there, and to Cas’s surprise, the only ones in the room today were Azazel and Crowley. Of course, Crowley was still wearing a black dress shirt and crimson tie even though it was sweltering hot. Even Cas, who was wearing a t-shirt and shorts, was sweating profusely, and he had just gotten here.

Ever since lunch, Cas had been on high alert, the three bottles of drugs in his bag seeming like 1000 lb. weights in his pocket. They were a constant presence, like the warmth of Dean’s touch and the immense lightness in his chest like taking a deep breath of air. They were the counterbalance, the polar opposite to his joy.

They were a reminder of what happened a year ago.

“Well, I hope you brought us some of the heavier stuff, Angel. Our customers can only deal with the same boring shit for so long before the kick dwindles off.”

The slithery British accent brushed against Cas’s cheek, a seduction tainted with oil and grease. He shivered at its touch, and as he heard Azazel’s chuckle from across the almost limitless expanse, he fervently prayed to every single god he knew that he would get out of this soon.

Cas brought out the bottles, the pills now larger and blue or yellow. They seemed to glimmer in the low light, as if they gave off their own radiance, a leftover effect from being in the hospital. That place, no matter how severe, had an overabundance of light, both metaphorical and literal. Even if he hated, Cas couldn’t deny the happiness he saw in patient’s faces when his brother attended to them. It was an interesting sight to see: Michael would come up to them, talk to them as if they were family, and he actually smiled, something he never did at home.

It was the bright spot in the hospital, the one thing he always liked to see. Before Dean, Cas had sat against the walls and simply watched as old man, young woman, little girl, middle-aged man walked or hopped or wheeled out of the hospital, a big smile on their faces and light just pouring out of their eyes like floodlights.

That was what he had liked, what he thought being a doctor was all about: giving others a reason to hope again, to fill them with the light that was lost when they got injured.

That was his mistake: he romanticised it.

Now, every day, Cas regretted that mistake, and he wanted to do anything else but this.

A hand materialized out of the dim air, leisurely plucking the bottles out of his grasp and tossing them to Azazel with a soundless sigh. Cas barely heard the small rattle of the pills as they bounced around in their containers, and he barely felt Crowley’s hand against his cheek, barely seeing those dark and sleazy eyes look into his own.

“I’ll ask one more time, alright? Now, there is a wrong and a right answer, despite what every game show host says, so choose carefully. The right answer will let you walk out of here alive and healthy. The wrong answer--” he chuckled darkly “-- will still let you leave, though more on your hands and your knees than anything else.”

Azazel smirked, a Cheshire Cat smile against the blackness, and if he looked hard enough, he could almost see the boy’s almost yellow eyes glinting in the orange light. Crowley stepped back, an equally smug smirk on his face, and held out his hand for a shake.

Cas stared at it, indecision clouding his mind and paling his face.

On the one hand, if he accepted Crowley’s deal, he could be safe from relatively anything (save for the potential to be caught by someone and have them be referred to the authorities). He could have a security, a sense of safety he had never felt since striking such a primitive business deal with them a year ago. Even if he hated the company he would keep, Cas wouldn’t have to worry about much, as long as he kept up the steady supply of prescription drugs from the hospital.

But if he did say ‘yes’, he was not only betraying Michael’s hard-earned trust, he was taking the very love his brother hopefully still had for him and spitting on it, maiming it and destroying it day by day until there was nothing left. Besides, he had romanticised the hospital as something that saved people from the worst of injuries, and weren’t prescription drugs a vital part of that overwrought mission? People needed them, and who was he to make a decision of this magnitude without slighting every past, present, and future patient in Bleeding Heart Memorial Hospital?

And then Dean popped into his head.

Dean, the boy who had endured everything, things he would never tell Castiel about, things that haunted him every single day. Dean, the one who kissed him and told him he was amazing and beautiful and all of the things he had never been told. Dean, the boy who had insulted him, only to apologize so profusely that it had surprised even Cas.

Dean, who was suffering so much more, and who needed Cas to get through the pile of shit that life had dealt him to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Dean, who Castiel Novak now knew he had fallen in love with.

And, in the end, that’s who made the decision for him. Cas could almost feel phantom hands wrapping around him, locking his arms to his sides and preventing that damning handshake from signing his life away in blood. He could hear that beautiful voice reverberating throughout his entire being, whispering _‘It’s not worth it. You can do this, rise above this, be YOU.’_

He shook his head no, not one word leaving his lips, and he watched as Crowley’s smile faltered, eyes turning almost black with rage. They were cold now, much like John Winchester’s own eyes, only not as obsidian-like as Fergus Crowley’s.

“Well, then. I should’ve expected this, coming from someone so weak and pathetic, someone like you who clings to the threads of romance and fantasy with reckless abandon. But, even so, you have chosen the wrong answer, and I’m not really a businessman if I don’t keep my to my threats.”

The British boy snapped his fingers once, and Azazel strode forward, much quicker than Castiel had anticipated, and slammed a fist into his gut. The air whooshed out of him immediately, and Cas could feel his eyes widen at the shock of it all before the dull pain came roaring in. He took a breath, trying to save what little life he had left, but before he got the chance to, Azazel had kneed him in the face, sending barbs of pain into his skull.

He felt a dull crack, followed by a searing firestorm around his nose, and he knew it had been broken.

The resulting blows were nothing he had felt before, rockets of pain going off again and again until he began to believe that all Castiel Novak was was a being composed entirely of hurt, that the threads of happiness he had held in his gut were only fleeting memories, small cures for a problem too large to solve.

As Cas’s head began to burn, and his arms and legs felt kind of numb, he thought, Will this ever stop?

It was a futile thought to cling to, a transient hope that was squashed as quickly as an ant is pulverized by the expanse of a boo crashing down at almost unimaginable speeds. He tried in vain to grasp at another happy thought, only for it to be vaporized by the beating his body was suffering.

And his mind suffered too.

Over and over, he tore at his happiness, screaming ‘this is what happens when you fail!’ ‘This is what happens when you make the wrong decision, when you fuck up so badly that nothing can be saved!’ ‘This is why you will never be fixed, never be healed; because you will always make the same choices and the same mistakes. You were always broken.’

The last thought rang into his mind like mourning bells, bouncing off every single niche in his brain and dragging deep scars into his very soul. He could see it now, his soul: it was a bright thing, so small and so insecure, but now it was darkening, purpling like the very bruises he had seen grown on Dean’s skin. It burst and popped and sizzled as if it were in boiling water, and it screamed.

And then, just before he could surrender to the dark beast that grinned at its chance to rear its head and live once again, there was light.

The monster inside, so formless and malleable, shrieked in silent agony as the light pierced it over and over, and Castiel slowly became aware that his body was not being pummeled by fists and feet anymore. He didn’t feel blows lighting on his body, and little by little, the world swam into darkness.

 **  
**Muffled words drifted into his ears, and the last thing that Castiel Novak beheld before he passed out were green eyes and all he heard was Dean Winchester, the boy he loved, yelling his name.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my lovelies!
> 
> And finally, the moment you have been waiting for thus far: the explanation to why Castiel decided to get into a deal with Crowley- a much more than you expected.
> 
> *hands you another box of tissues*
> 
> This could get sad.

Dean Winchester had a newfound hatred for hospitals.

The bright lights that had drawn him out of his post-suicide attempt unconscious now seemed glaring and cold, the walls confining and suffocating, and the noises shrieking and grating against his ears. Even the air felt weird in his lungs, like it was full of dust and sand.

He sat in a chair, placed in the exact spot that Cas had placed his chair when he had been in the hospital, only now the roles were reserved: his friend-maybe-crush-maybe-first-love was in the bed, sleeping away his pain, and Dean was in the chair, waiting and wishing that he would wake up. Now he knew what Castiel had felt like when he had sunk below the surface of his mind, like being submerged in water.

Dean knew from the moment that Cas had said “Nothing” on the way back from lunch that something was up. He knew that he had been looking towards the boiler room door, a portal that had been called ‘Hell’ by everyone who had ever been in there. In truth, Dean decided not to tell them that Hell was mostly cold based on Dante’s personal description, but he got the connotation nonetheless.

He himself had only been there once, for only a few minutes, and when he had finally stepped outside, Dean had felt the growing sweat stains on his shirt and he had been at least two degrees hotter.

He also knew that that was where Fergus Crowley and his cronies dwelled.

Fergus Crowley came from a long line of crooks and dealers, if what he said during their ninth grade Civics presentation had anything to say by it. The subject had been ‘Family History’, and his was one of the only projects where more than two of the people’s ancestors had a history of violence or debauchery. Apparently, his grandfather and his father before him and his father before him and so on were all professed mafiosos, connected to the underworld in their souls and brimming with blood money.

Dean hadn’t known what was scarier about the boy: that his history could be real or that he took great pride in it.

Either way, Crowley was known for making deals that eventually came back to bite you in the ass, and the rest of his friends were no different. Lilith was more than likely a psychopath, or at least a schizophrenic; Meg was just sinister in her own way, and had a tendency to be very good at finding out secrets; Azazel was clearly the muscle, but everyone knew the kid had some serious talent with schemes.

They were all a horrible bunch, and not one person who ever made a deal with them enjoyed the benefits. It was the Devil’s Deal, they said, that there was nothing you could do about it and that if you felt desperate, it was best to avoid them altogether unless Meg tracked you down.

And Cas was now in the hospital, having made some sort of deal with them.

When Dean looked at the clock again, an hour had passed, and Gabriel had slipped inside of the hospital room door, leaning against the doorframe with a uncharacteristically stony look on his face. He was very angry, and he knew from experience that when Gabriel Novak was angry, all bets were off and there were no more pranks.

They sat in silence for a moment, letting it pool around them like smoke, filling up the room with effervescent tendrils of despair, fear, and anger. The latter came from Gabriel’s direction, but Dean knew he was responsible for the other two, and he gripped Cas’s good hand tightly, as if he were a lifeline or a buoy that was just barely keeping him from slipping under.

“Why would he take a deal with him?”

The words left Dean’s mouth a whisper, but to his ears, it felt like a shout, reverberating around the room and seeping into the stale, hostile walls.

Gabriel sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, and said, “You know, I don’t feel that it’s my job to tell you.”

“Why the fuck not?!” Dean said, louder than before.

Gabriel winced visibly, and in that second, Dean saw the fear and sadness his friend kept so deeply in his soul. Something had gone seriously wrong in the Novak family, a kind of curse that rooted itself in all of their hearts like a fungus, festering and leeching them dry until they were barely keeping themselves together. It was a trend in the Novak family, Dean had realized: every single one of them held something so damn close to them that it weighed them down.

“I wasn’t as close to Balthazar as he was.”

“Who’s Balthazar?”

Gabriel said nothing more, only straightening up and nodding to Dean before taking his leave. The room noticeably more empty, he tried not to be angry, but how in the hell was he not? His best friend, who had told him everything in the entire world he had wanted to know, was now steadfastly refusing to speak on something that could be the key to Cas’s depression. Didn’t he understand that all Dean wanted to do was to help Cas, hold him when he was crying, make him smile more, and probably more?

His watch beeped its sinister chirp, and Dean sighed before gathering up his emotions and his stuff and leaving the room, pausing only to kiss Cas’s forehead and say, “Wake up soon.” Dean had to work with Bobby today, blessfully without John, and he needed the money.

*~*~*

The day had been a beautiful one.

Castiel had never had as much fun as he had that day, now that he and Balthazar were in high school and now in a different plane of existence. At least, that was what it felt like, ascending only one grade up. But, hey, they had to go to a new place that was a mile or so away from the middle school, and both boys had decided to mutually forget the years they had just completed.

Besides, as long as he was with Balthazar, Cas didn’t have to worry about anything.

The two boys had decided that, as their first day of summer progressed, they would do practically everything there was to do before the day was over. It was going to be a no-holds-barred day of fun, with all of their favorite activities: going to the movies, playing video games, reading, throwing the Frisbee, and much more.

They were on their way back from the park, scarlet Frisbee in hand, when Balthazar said, “Hey, Cas.”

“Yeah?”

“I wonder what it would be like to be gay.”

The question came out of the blue, and Cas had to control himself so that he didn’t freak out or anything. Homosexuality was not a subject he was particularly fond of, but not because of the topic in general. He had no problem with gay men and women; he had actually talked to a few of them when him and his family had taken a trip to New York during June’s Pride Parade. Of course, Castiel was not supposed to go to the parade, given the Christian teachings his oldest brother held so dear.

But, as usual, Gabriel found nothing wrong with the idea and whisked him there anyway.

Castiel had been utterly amazed by the colors that dotted the entire parade, all of the hues of the rainbow floating through the air and through the crowd like mirages. Some flags were not rainbow, but had some other colors like purple and blue and gray. But they still had the rainbow-esque pattern on them, so Cas guessed that the flags still meant something.

There were a few times that Cas had his eyes covered because some people were a little more risque with their outfit choices, and Gabriel did a fair job of not mentally scarring him the entire time.

Men and women kissed and held hands and walked with flags; some rode motorcycles with words on them that he hadn’t been familiar with like ‘dyke’ or ‘butch’. There were even children in the parades, ranging from teenagers all the way down to babies in strollers with Pride flags on their face and smiles abounding.

In all, it had been one of Cas’s greatest pleasures, but he had kept it a secret for a long time, especially so around Michael. Michael didn’t like the gays.

“Why are you asking?” Cas asked, trying to keep his voice calm.

“Because I’m not sure if I’m gay or not.” Balthazar answered plainly, as if he wasn’t alluding to his possible homosexuality and was instead talking about his cat or the color of the sky. IT was an abrupt kind of confession, and Cas pondered the possibility for a few seconds.

So what if he was gay? Balthazar was probably going to still be his friend, even if he liked boys and stuff. As long as he knew that Cas liked girls, he felt somewhat confident that nothing too awkward would take place.

“Well, I suppose it’s pretty much the same as straight people, I guess.”

“Explain,” Balthazar said, not unkindly.

“I mean, it’s just the gender that’s d-d-different, nothing else. Straight people like each other for more than just their bodies, like personality and laugh and smile and other things. So, it makes sense that g-g-gay people like boys and g-girls for the same reasons.

That’s why I d-don’t really like Michael a lot now. He’s always g-g-going on and on about how if I talk to a g-gay person or g-g-g-get to know them or anything like that, that I’m g-going to c-catch a d-d-d-d-disease or that I’ll c-catch the g-g-gay too.”

Cas looked over at his friend, and was unpleasantly surprised to see that he wasn’t smiling. Balthazar was looking down at the ground as they walked through the grass, eyes downcast and a frown on his face. Cas though he saw tears unshed in his eyes, and a rush of worry passed through him.

“I’m sorry that I said anything, I d-d-didn’t mean it like---”

And that was when Balthazar had kissed him.

It was nothing like Dean’s kiss, now that Castiel had something to compare it with. Whereas Dean’s had been soft and gentle, Balthazar’s was rushed and desperate. It wasn’t hard necessarily, but it wasn’t anything he had expected. It wasn’t sweet or calm or even reciprocated.

When Balthazar pulled away, both boys were breathing hard, and his face was a look of complete and utter terror. He had not meant to do that, especially not to Castiel Novak, who might never be his friend ever again and who would probably denounce him and tell his brother and then he would be royally screwed. It had been a heat of the moment kind of decision, and now that it was over, Balthazar Roche was afraid.

Cas couldn’t speak for a few minutes, too wrapped up in his thoughts and his terrified and confused ramblings to acutely understand how much his input mattered to his friend. Every single emotion he could possibly ran through him and battered his mind, muddling his trains of thought and short-circuiting him.

Chief among the thoughts was _How long has he wanted to do that?_

Next was _Does Balthazar have a crush on me?_

After that, the main thought became _What do I do now?!_

Finally, the smallest, subtlest, most important thought was _I think I liked the kiss._

That was what scared him the most, that he had somehow enjoyed the desperate, terrified, heated exchange. It didn’t make sense to him, because he had always been straight, always looked at girls like every other boy did, and he had never felt different.

But he knew that was a lie.

Cas had never felt like he fit into his own skin, and muddled thoughts from months, weeks, days ago swam to his mind, all questioning and confused. Every time he had looked at another man and thought, he’s good-looking, hit him in the gut, and he overanalyzed and went through every single one to see if he had been gay this whole time or if it had been a slow development up to this day, this defining moment.

“Cas?”

Balthazar’s terrified voice broke through his reveries, and he found himself staring at his friend’s lips, and it didn’t feel very uncomfortable to do.

“Cas, say something.”

Cas couldn’t speak.

“C’mon, Cas. I need you to say something to me, anything at all.”

Nothing left his lips.

Balthazar was now freaking out, visibly crying and shaking and panting. His life was now ruined, he had just kissed his best friend, whose family was one of the most devoutly Christian families in the state, and now he wasn't saying anything.

His panicked mind screamed and scrabbled for any purchase amidst the emotional storm inside of him, and one though was repeated over and over and over.

_I wish I was dead._

Finally, Cas looked up into his friend’s eyes and beheld his terror, his panic, his desperation. In his silence, he raced through every single possible protocol he could ever use in this situation and not look like the bad guy and make his friend hate him.

But before he could even say anything, Balthazar ran.

Cas was stuck looking on as his friend, the one person in his life he could trust to keep his secrets and know he could talk to about anything in the world, who had extended that same amount of trust to him and had been betrayed by silence, ran away from him, sobbing.

The Frisbee felt cold and heavy in his hand as the sweltering sun beat down on him, and Cas made the long trip home from the park in dismayed silence, mind running in circles and circles until he wasn’t really thinking anymore. He spent the whole night afterwords in that fugue, not really responding to anyone or anything, and his room became his solace.

Even Michael’s angry pounding against the door, Anna’s pleas, and Gabriel’s soft words did nothing to disturb him from his state of complete unresponsiveness, and Cas just let himself go. It was the first time he had ever retreated into his mind, and it would not be the last.

Three days later, on a Sunday in July, Balthazar Roche slit his wrists with a razor blade.

Three days later, Castiel Novak came to terms with his homosexuality just a little too late.

Three days later, his depression ran rampant, and Cas refused to speak about how he felt.

Three days later, the summer of Castiel’s life had ended, painted in scarlet tears.

Months after the suicide of Balthazar, months after his funeral, weeks after his return to school, Castiel Novak went into the boiler room and asked for prescription drugs to numb the pain away. And Crowley, being the businessman he always was, obliged.

Cas eventually became addicted to those drugs, particularly morphine. It helped him sleep at night, made the transition from responsive to unresponsive easier, and it dulled his nightmares. Balthazar’s face had haunted his dreams from that day onward, and there was no refuge.

Eventually, it became known that Balthazar’s suicide was caused by his homosexuality, which he had written about in a notebook before he had slit his wrists. The public tittered and whispered, comments on the horror of it all mingling with the renewed affirmations that being gay was a sin, and that God ensured that all those who sinned got their just rewards.

Cas remembered vividly the night his brother said that, tongue loosened only slightly by alcohol. “Served him right,” Michael had said stonily, an impassive and uncaring look in his eyes. The scotch in his glass twinkled amber in the light of the fireplace, and the slight smell of smoke had filled Cas’s nostrils. The smoke was a hurried excuse to leave the room, as well as to cover up the presence of tears in his eyes.

As high school continued, Cas never went a day without thinking about what could’ve been, especially in regards to Balthazar Roche. His friend was always in his mind, whether it be in dreams or figments of his imagination or even hallucinations in his dark, empty room. He always looked the same: wearing a v-neck t-shirt, jeans, and two vertical scars running the length of his arm.

“Why didn’t you say something?” he whispered sadly, tears running down his face and mingling with the blood on his arms.

_Why didn't you say something?_ , his conscience whispered as his padded feet walked towards the bathroom.

Why?

He had grabbed the razor blades.

Why?

Cas had let the blackness swallow him in its velvet embrace.

Why?

Cas had repeated it as he lay in the hospital bed, unable to let this life go and unable to forget the slight he had made on the life of his best friend, who had succeeded where he had not. How lucky Balthazar was, to escape this life of anguish and pain and not have to worry about anything as trivial as sexual orientation or how others perceived you.

How lucky was he to be free.

Cas didn’t speak about much in group therapy; rather, he sat in his chair and stared at the linoleum floor, wishing he could sink right through and suffocate on the concrete and end it all. Day after day, he let others relieve themselves of their pains and share their darkest thoughts, and he bottled them up inside, wishing eternal torment on his soul over and over and over.

And then he broke free.

The phantom of Balthazar Roche stopped appearing in his room, in his dreams, but the few times it did, it smiled and wished him luck in life and pushed him to speak. It was no longer an omen of horror, of sadness, but an angel of perseverance and love that Cas so clearly lacked.

It was a surprise to anyone when Cas finally answered a question in group therapy and talked about his best friend Balthazar, who had taken his life over something he couldn’t control.

It was a surprise when Cas associated himself more and more with the nurses and made kind comments to them all.

It was a surprise when the boy who had given up began to fight back.

Eventually, the surprise transformed into pride and suddenly, Castiel Novak was being released from the hospital’s psych ward, having passed his psychological evaluation with flying colors. Granted, he was still melancholy and quiet and withdrawn, but he was no long internally damaged, and he no longer needed the help of sedatives to sleep.

He was healed.

But, of course, real life beckoned, and he was forced to assist Crowley to make up for the massive debts he had created in his desperate need to escape his pain, and Michael’s decision to make him shadow at the hospital only made it easier and more painful to steal the drugs he had once used.

Regret, sadness, and depression still lingered in the back of his mind, but now, Cas was comfortable saying he was happy (or at least as close to it as he could ever be). There were still problems, but he was functional and he woke up every day ready to face the world.

And then there was Dean, and here he was.


	12. Chapter 12

Dean Winchester was very angry.

Normally, Dean had enough sense in the world to keep this potentially destructive anger to himself (like Sam), but once his crush/lover/boyfriend/whatever-Cas-was was beaten up for simply refusing to bow down to a slimy greaseball like Crowley, all the stops were pulled out, and he felt the familiar and exhilarating sting of righteous fury in his chest.

Even if he never really knew why Cas had even gotten in deep with Crowley anyway, Dean Winchester would be damned if he didn’t do something.

He had left the hospital with an overwhelming sense of confusion and a name that meant nothing to him: Balthazar. Dean wasn’t very big on angels and the Bible and such, but he was pretty sure that there was an angel named Balthazar somewhere in there and he kind of doubted that Cas would get hung up on an angel.

That left only one other option: someone he knew had done something very wrong that somehow involved Castiel directly.

Dean wanted to go to the library right now and boot up good ol’ Google and find this Balthazar kid and get the whole thing over with, but duty called, and so he left the hospital (leaving a kiss on Cas’s forehead as he left) and drove the Impala to an old salvage yard on the outskirts of town.

The Singer Salvage Yard was not a pretty place, but then again, why should it be? The ground was mostly dirt and dust, with a few dead or close-to-dying weeds here and there. The metal walls that encircled the property were humongous and spotted with rust borne of age and weather. They creaked and moaned during windstorms and thunderstorms, but Dean had always associated them with the feeling of home. Mountains of cars were stacked in and around the property, most rusted and a few completely shattered or broken. They were the ones who gave Dean and Bobby spare parts, allowing them to work on the cars that needed to be fixed.

Dean often remembered him and Sam playing hide-and-seek among the towers of automobiles, and for a second, he lost himself in the sounds of muted children’s laughter and the sound of creaking metal.

Those had been simpler days, without a lingering sense of worry or fear that so often precipitated his days now.

Dean expertly maneuvered the Impala through the monuments to mankind’s need for speed and into what he had not acclimated to calling his ‘parking space’, which was nothing more than a patch of free ground in front of the flimsy shack that held all of the tools and the necessary components.

He could hear clanging and other metallic noises when he stepped out of the car, and Dean smiled when he heard the muffled rumbling of the man he would have preferred to be his father.

Grinning mischieviously, Dean tiptoed into the small house, pausing every so often to gather his resolve once again and to avoid precarious stacks of tools. Any small movement would set off a cascade of irritating noise, as well as alerting Bobby to his presence.

Finally, after an eternity of soft and slow progress, he rounded the corner to find a nice cherry red Mustang, halfway between new and rusty- the perfect balance. It had no decals, and the paint was slightly chipped, and the hood was up, exposing the innards of the machine. It had always been a comforting sight for Dean, the engine of a muscle car: stationary, it was simply a hunk of metal tubes and valves that could allow for fluids and heat and energy to flow through it. But when active, it became an energy source that was strong yet gentle, simple yet complex, that depended on you.

Currently, a man was bent over said hood, inspecting and muttering to himself as he worked. He was wearing jeans (no doubt spotted with engine grease and oil) that were cuffed at the ankles, exposing a pair of work boots. Dean could see a flannel overshirt peeking out from the back of the man’s jeans, and he had no doubt in his mind that he was wearing a ‘Singer’s Salvage’ baseball cap on his head.

Creeping ever closer until he was behind the man, Dean took out his phone (an older model than the fancy iPhones others his age had) and scrolled through the music playlist until he found the perfect song to play. He pressed the play button, and grinned as he made sure the volume was up to the highest possible setting.

‘Heat of the Moment’ by Asia blared out of the phone’s more formidable speaker, and Dean burst out laughing at the startled movement of the man, coupled with a metallic clang and a barked ‘IDJIT!’

While he was practically rolling on the floor, Bobby Singer stood above Dean, eyes smiling though his face was not. There were many reasons as to why he wasn’t smiling, one of which being the injuring of his head from this little shit’s music. There were also other reasons, things he wouldn’t talk about, but for the most part, he was always a kind of cool man to be around. Even if his manner was a little gruff and he wasn’t one to mince words, Bobby Singer was the penultimate father figure, and he cared for Dean and Sam like nobody else.

Not even John Winchester could tarnish the man’s record.

“Well, now that you’ve aged me by ten years and my heart’s gonna burst at any second, git your ass over here and help me fix up this engine.” Bobby said, not unkindly.

Still wiping tears from his eyes, Dean stumbled over to the car, and work continued as usual, except without the unfortunate presence of John Winchester.

It was a funny thing that Dean had noticed quite early on in his life after the loss of his mother: he craved the times without his father’s presence, and when they came, they were more beautiful than anything he had ever felt before.

He had an aura around him, a kind of sickness that seeped into Dean’s every pore and pooled in his gut and his mind until his thinking was muddled and warped. It was an insidious parasite, sapping every molecule of even the most meaningless of joys and draining it away until there was nothing left than the shell of a day once enjoyed.

But now that John Winchester had decided to up and leave for an entire day or two (the latter was more likely), Dean and Sam could actually enjoy their days- as well as enjoy simple pleasures like pizza and general peace and quiet.

His presence was even more awful in the garage and salvage shop, but because he wasn’t there, Bobby and Dean both felt an enormous weight lifted from their shoulders, and work continued much quicker and more and more cars were fixed by the day’s end. Fixing cars (as well as painting them) was one of Dean’s favorite jobs, even though he didn’t want to do that for the rest of his future.

In truth, Dean had a soft spot for photography, and for good reason.

It had been one of those random things that he had never been able to fully improve or even interact with, considering the nature of his homelife, but in the early days of Dean Winchester’s life, before the abuse escalated, when his father was only slightly neglectful, he found solace in the old cameras that the previous owners of their house had left behind.

They were old models, things of the 60s and the 70s, and some of which needed some darkrooms in order to develop the pictures, which Dean did not have available. He would’ve needed to buy some chemicals and find a room which he could be certain his father would not walk into and ruin. The latter fact was the dealbreaker, and he decided against using those cameras.

And then he found the Argus C3 Matchmatic, a plain camera with gold-ish undertones and a small attachment on the top for flash photography.

It required 35 mm film, which was actually common today, and it was kind of small, allowing for more portability. Another thing that Dean later discovered using the handy-dandy school computers instead of researching a long-dead historical figure was that the Argus C3 model was one of the longest running models of cameras in the world, as well as the film. Besides, the whole reason for its popularity was the crisp and clear images, separating them from most of the competitors.

Instantly, he had fallen in love with the camera, and whenever he wasn’t burdened by John Winchester’s presence, the camera would find its way into his backpack or on a lanyard around his neck.

Bobby knew full-well about his love of cameras and photography, and whenever he saved enough money, he would buy some much-needed film for Dean, who was practically his son. Whereas John was the biological father, Bobby liked to think of himself as more of the father figure, especially in terms of always being there for both boys.

He secretly wished that John Winchester would come out of this funk soon, but Bobby had tried to help him before, and every single time he fell back into the pattern almost immediately. John was his greatest friend, but with each passing day, Bobby wondered more and more if he had made a mistake in not getting him checked into an actual facility for addicts, as well as keeping with him as a friend.

Sometimes, friends who surround themselves with trouble often drag everyone down with them, and the best option is to simply cut ties with them before you drown in their problems.

Bobby had read that somewhere, in some magazine his late wife liked reading or something like that, and only now had he finally decided to act on it. He had been the confidant for too long, the enabler to a broken man’s addiction to heroin and alcohol, and now, it had to end or else these boys would suffer more than they had ever suffered before.

Bobby had been down that road before, and he would hate for any one of them to live it.

The rest of the day passed quickly, with engine parts and oil and grease and tinkering tools overwhelming all of Dean’s senses until it was a numbing buzz that simply motivated him to work. It was nice, to have an earthly buzzing that just muted out everything else out, especially for someone like Dean, whose problems weighed quite heavily on his mind.

It was dinnertime when John Winchester walked (or stumbled, rather) onto the premises and promptly passed out in an old car. Neither Bobby nor Dean felt the overwhelming need to obey common decency and give him a blanket, knowing full well what happened when John was woken up earlier than his body intended, though Dean knew much more about its repercussions than Bobby did.

Sweating and covered in engine fluids, Bobby and Dean shuffled into the house that lay on the edge of the property. It was a sturdy house, three stories high and reminiscent of some of the victorian houses that lay in the more wealthy of neighborhoods, save for the tasteful wear-and-tear that immediately gave it more life. The windows were mostly clean, with a nice layer of dust and grime that could be seen through if you focused hard enough. The front door was sturdy but worn, with a simple knocker and a doorbell on the side.

Inside, it was cluttered and dusty with books and papers from tons of research done in the early stages of Robert Singer’s life. There was barely any spare room in the rooms of the house that weren’t occupied by tomes of mythology and world religions, but that was somehow more comfortable than if the rooms had been as bare as Dean’s own house.

Bobby lived alone in the house ever since his wife died ten or so years ago, but he seemed to thrive in the solitude of his cramped house, and Dean couldn’t help but exhale contentedly whenever he walked inside.

The kitchen was the same as the rest of the house: cluttered, but not obnoxiously so. Any plates that were in the sink were clean (or close enough to it), and most of the silverware and unused plates were in their respective cabinets. The fridge was also clean, any messes made by beer or salsa or anything else that was somewhat of a pain to clean up were nonexistent, and there was enough free space on the kitchen table, beside five wall-phones, that Dean could sit and do his math homework and still have enough space to spread it out a little.

Dean collapsed into a chair, exhaustion pricking at the corners of his mind, but in his haste to sit down and revel in the joy of resting, he had forgotten the bruises on his ribs that his father had given him the night before. He winced visibly at the pain, and glanced at Bobby to see if he had seen.

Bobby’s back was turned, thankfully, so Dean tried his best to relax and settle into the wooden chair without agitating the bruises.

“So, how’s it going, being back in the real world?” Bobby asked not unkindly, handing Dean a Coca-Cola from the fridge, one of the vintage ones that still tasted good even though it hadn’t been opened in what looked like years.

“It’s been good,” Dean said, gratefully accepting the soda and popping the cap with one smooth motion. “It’s really nice to have more than just the bland green hospital walls to look at, and not to mention the presence of actual natural light.”

Bobby smiled softly, and said, “Well, trust me. On this end, there was plenty of happiness that you got out of there…”

Dean could hear the question at the end of the statement, the concern that peppered Bobby’s tone. He wanted to know why he had thrown himself in front of the truck in the first place, and he couldn’t blame him. If Dean were anyone else, he would be asking the same thing.

But how do you confess to the man who’s more of a father than the one passed out just outside that said man is abusing you in every way, across the board, and that you just couldn’t take it anymore?

How do you shatter a man’s trust in his oldest friend without feeling the repercussions? Granted, John was no longer really a friend to Bobby- hell, to anyone, but surely he didn’t want to know what went on behind those closed and locked doors.

No one would.

Still the question made him uncomfortable, so Dean did the best thing he could: ignored it. “That Mustang’s engine is being a bitch to fix up. Who the hell would run her so far into the ground that the engine is barely being held together? It’s sacrilege on the deepest level.”

Bobby continued to silently regard the boy, watching as he spoke about the car they were currently fixing up. He knew it was a distraction, that he was deliberately changing the subject. It wasn’t like he was born yesterday, but the way Dean seemed to think he wouldn’t notice the winces of pain at just sitting down or the look of pure terror that flitted across his face like the shadow of a bird was enough to make him feel utterly hopeless. Something horrible was going on in those boys’ lives, and Bobby Singer felt as if there was nothing he could do…..

...Not without information.

And to get information, you had to cozy up to someone, make them forget about it enough that one day they let is slip so casually into conversation that it surprises even them. Either that or educate themselves on the signs, look for those little tics that said _Help, there’s something wrong here!_

And Bobby was nothing if not thorough.

So he nodded and smiled and laughed with Dean until the Cokes were all finished and the the sun set a little lower in the sky. And then Bobby ordered Dean to do his homework, and went outside to see if John was awake. He had disappeared from his spot, and Bobby could count on one of his hands the places he would likely be.

Bobby sighed to himself as he surveyed the empty scrapyard, noting without surprise that the Impala had disappeared. It looked like Dean was going to have to spend the night, which meant Bobby had to pick up Sam as well. He was at some kind of study party or whatever at a friend’s house- he thought her name was Jessica or something like that.

With a second set aside for poking his head into the kitchen and telling Dean that he was going to pick up his brother and that they would be sleeping here this evening (he didn’t miss the look of pure relief that made his heart ache), Bobby drove off to the address the older Winchester boy had given him. The 1971 Chevelle purred like a dream, and he was smiling as he pulled into the driveway of the nice house that belonged to the Moores.

Feeling kind of underdressed in his work clothes, Bobby swallowed down his awkwardness as he rang the doorbell. It was answered by a woman with blonde hair and kind brown eyes.

“Are you here for Sam?” She asked kindly.

“Yes, ma’am.” Bobby answered politely, and the woman stepped aside to yell up the stairs, “SAM! YOUR FATHER IS HERE!”

Bobby tried to ignore that irony of the situation, and plastered on a smile as Sam practically sprinted down the stairs, backpack in hand and one shoe on his feet.

“Hey Bo-- Dad!” Sam said, catching himself before he could let Bobby’s lie evaporate. He still looked happy, and Bobby had to struggle not to tear up at the mirrored look of relief in the younger boy’s eyes. The kid was bright enough to know when John was out of the picture that evening, and even though he should’ve been sad, especially in his father’s case, Sam felt no guilt.

“Hey, buddy.” Bobby said, putting his hand on Sam’s shoulder before saying, “You look like you’re missing a shoe, kiddo.”

Confused, Sam looked down and both parents laughed at the look of utter shock on his face. Without a word and with a face as red as a tomato, the boy sprinted back up the stairs, leaving Bobby and Mrs. Moore to observe him with amusement and no small amount of happiness.

They talked for a little while longer about Bobby’s job and how Dean was doing (being suicidal in a town like this got around) before Sam walked back downstairs, this time with two shoes and a girl following after him. She was just as beautiful as her mother, and it was a natural kind of beauty, the kind that didn’t require large amounts of makeup to maintain, and judging by the adorably shy looks between them, Sam and Jessica had something going on.

Mrs. Moore introduced Jessica to Bobby before they left, waving back at them and promising to return for another study session before departing in Bobby’s car and returning home. The entire way, Sam was beaming as if the entire world had turned into gold and there were rainbows in the sky.

At home, Bobby was pleasantly surprised to see that Dean had knocked out all of his homework in his absence, and as a treat, he let Dean make the dessert: the famous Singer Apple Pie that he could eat all by himself, if Bobby had lacked enough sense to let him have his way.

The rest of the evening was the same as every other evening that Dean and Sam Winchester spent with Bobby Singer: amazing. They did all of the things that real families were supposed to do, like play obnoxiously hilarious board games or throw jabs at each other that they really didn’t mean or even talk about their days and their dreams. Of course, the subject of the abuse was off the table for both boys, having been conditioned to fear their father’s response, but Bobby was still aware of something being awfully wrong.

So, when both boys were sound asleep (Dean with the help of some bipolar disorder medication, as well as an Advil for a ‘headache’ that Bobby was sure didn’t exist), Bobby Singer sat down in front of the desktop computer and opened up a search engine.

**  
His first search was ‘symptoms of abuse’.**


	13. Chapter 13

Cas’s eyes opened sluggishly, torn away from the illusion of sleep he had been stuck with for the last few days. It wasn’t the same sleep he used to have, the kind that wasn’t torn apart by horrible dreams and nightmarish beasts that maimed his soul.

His eyes registered the hospital walls and ceiling light, whispering that it was the same place he had woken up in before, but still Castiel knew something was out of place.

Something was wrong in this little room, and at first he couldn’t place it. The walls seemed the same, no sagging or rippling like he had anticipated. The lights weren’t flickering, not ominously if they were. Nothing had changed color, no one was sitting next to him--

Wait.

Straining a little, Cas turned his head just the barest amount, trying to ignore the pounding in his head. He had hurt his head badly, quite badly; Azazel had either donned steel-toed boots before beating the shit out of him, or he had kicked really really hard, because now he had what the doctors called ‘traumatic brain injury’. All they said was that he would feel off for a while, reality would seem off-kilter, and hallucinations were quite common. They said that for the most part, the hallucinations would be manageable and that he could separate them from reality easily.

And didn’t Castiel know it, because now, Balthazar Roche was sitting in a chair at his bedside, hands clasped in his lap and bright blue eyes looking at him expectantly.

Cas closed his eyes, squinting harder and harder until nonexistent colored swirls peppered his eyelids, like he used to do as a child, and opened them again, letting the black disappear as his eyes adjusted to the light once again.

Balthazar was still there.

“Don’t think that you can get rid of me, Cassie. I’m a little more durable than your average hallucinations.”

“You shouldn’t be here, Balthy.” Cas said, addressing him by the nickname he hadn’t used in years. “You’re d-d-dead.”

Balthazar smiled ruefully, gesturing to himself as if he were a magic trick.

“Well, now. If that’s true, and I’m still here, I wonder what you think I am.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t suppose you remember that last time I appeared to you? That was--”

“--three years ago.”

“--three years ago, Cassie. And if I appeared to you then, and I’m appearing to you now, what does that suggest about me as an entity?”

“Either you are a very persistent hallucination, or a g-g-ghost, which I d-don’t believe in.”

Balthazar grinned at him, as if he didn’t believe him one bit. It was a smile he had often flashed at him whenever he told him that he didn’t want to do something cool, like sneak out at night to go watch the stars or take that one sip of beer they had found near the general store (which had tasted awful).

“Well, then. I suppose that if a ghost is out of the question, and you still want to believe that I’m more than just a simple hallucination from your damaged mind, then how about something more….. divine?”

Cas knew he was talking about angels.

Angels, the winged messengers and protectors of God and all of humanity. The entities were flaunted by Christianity daily, so much so that Castiel had begun to doubt the existence of angels, or the physical manifestations of them, at least. The Bible said that they were all multi-faced, with many wings and heads of animals.

Cas did not doubt that if they ever physically existed, that they were terrifying at least and that they would be avoided and feared instead of revered.

But even if angels existed, that didn’t mean that God was real, that Heaven was even a reachable place that wasn’t the fiction of a delirious mind.

Ever since his friend’s death, Castiel had been doubting his faith, his religion no longer holding the beauty and promise that he had once found pride and acceptance in. In the days after the revelation that Balthazar had been questioning his sexuality at the time of his death, there had been no compassion, no love spared for the boy who had once sang in their choir, practiced in their Christmas productions, sat with them in Bible Study. No, that boy was gone, replaced by a shadow of Balthazar, consumed by sin and damned for all eternity.

The Church saw a dead boy who deserved love and acceptance as a phantom, an omen of things to come if they strayed from the straight-and-narrow-path, and deserving of scorn and admonition.

Castiel had seen it, then: the real faces of those he had trusted and loved laid bare to his horror and sadness.

The love he had beheld had masked the scorn they held.

The charity they had carried out with sickeningly-sweet smiles rotted into disdain.

The salvation they lauded turned into twisted praise for the death of an innocent.

The calls for prayer sounded sour in Castiel’s ears, sounding more and more like shrieks of greed and hatred.

Castiel was not a friend of the church anymore, no longer. He saved face, continued to smile when he was expected to, pray when he was told to, but dying slowly and quietly inside. And even as he tried to hide his disdain from his siblings, they knew and they understood.

Anna saw it every time he turned his gaze to the sky.

Gabriel noticed it from the abandoned rosary.

Michael caught wind of it through crosses turned away from his gaze, but he thought nothing of it. He had had his trials with God, and he too had suffered a crisis of faith with the death of Balthazar, though not fo the same reason. He had been worried that with such a death close to his community, that the ideals of the Church would be corrupted by the young Brit’s sin, that his death would somehow make him a martyr for a cause that was too dastardly to follow.

He had seen the Devil’s work in this blasphemy against the creations of God, and Michael Novak was determined to make sure his peers would not fall from righteous grace over the death of a boy who had sinned against God himself, and did not repent.

_Why spend time mourning a sinner when he is already damned?_

Cas’s faith had taken a turn for the worse, and he still wasn’t entirely sure what to believe. And now his dead best friend who had had a crush on him was back in the apparent land of the living and was asking him to believe he was an angel, of all things.

“Why are you here, Balthy?” Castiel asked, not wanting to engage in a spiritual debate with his friend.

“It seems to me that _you_ are in a spot of bother. I mean, you engaged a self-professed miniature mafioso in a deal that _never_ would’ve ended well, stole drugs from the hospital, and on top of it all, fell in love with a boy who left this very room not two months ago!”

Cas remained silent, watching as Balthazar’s face animated. It was almost as if nothing had ever happened, that his friend was still here and that he hadn’t sliced his wrists from end to end.

“Say what you will about what I am, I am here to assist you in knowing what the hell you’re going to do! You’ve been given a chance, Cassie, not just in love but in life! And you are doing a _fantastic_ job of not moving forward with it!”

He took a deep breath, and it was then that Castiel noticed that Balthazar did not look as he did when he died. He was older, around the same age as him, and he was wearing a black v-neck t-shirt and scuffed jeans held up by a spiky belt. He looked…… _good_ , for someone who was dead and gone.

“Considering you are going to be here for a little while longer, _we_ are going a very serious chat about your little boyfriend Dean.”

Balthazar jumped up from the chair leaning very close to Castiel as he did so. He would’ve jumped back or recoiled, if he didn’t have serious brain trauma. Besides, moving just a little hurt a lot, and Cas was a sucker for pain.

“WHY IN THE NAME OF HEAVEN HAVEN’T ASKED THAT BOY OUT?!”

“D-d-didn’t have time--”

“Didn’t have TIME?! You had all the time in the world, and you haven’t even once considered making a move? Have you even KISSED him yet?”

“Yes, I have.”

Balthazar’s look was surprised, at least. His eyes were practically the size of saucers, and he was caught in mid-thought. He had been gesturing quite wildly in the air, and now, his arms hung in the air, as if held by a puppet master that had stopped moving.

And then he smiled so widely and Cas was struck with how human it looked and how much he missed his friend.

“You big slut, good for you!”

Despite himself, Cas blushed furiously and smiled, and Balthazar clapped him lightly on the shoulder, as one would do to a protege or a child who had done a great job scoring the final touchdown at a football game.

“Now, even though I wish it would’ve been me in Dean’s position right now, some things just can’t happen. Ah, well. I’ll settle for second place.”

Cas’s smile grew sad, and Balthazar’s shoulders hunched a little, making him seem so much more older and sadder. Tears prickling at the corner of his eyes, he reached over and took Balthazar’s hand again, his mind whispering _It might not be real._

“D-d-don’t worry about it, Balthy. If you were here, in the flesh, you would’ve been my first and maybe my only. If only I had said something, talked to you and not been such a fool--”

He had begun to shake now, tears beginning to fall and lip quivering like an earthquake. Balthazar’s eyes softened , and he grabbed Cas’s face with the other hand.

“Hey, hey ,hey. Don’t cry now. I’m alright, wherever you think I am. I can’t change anything, and even if I could, there’s nothing that would make me hurt more. Mistakes were made, a life was lost, and now, it’s set in stone. It was both of our faults, what happened that day, so don’t you _dare_ put it on your shoulders and yours alone. _Tell him._ ”

Cas’s tears slowly stopped, and his heaving chest eventually regained its normal appearance. Balthazar was still there, still holding onto his hand, and dull, Cas wished that he could never let go. It was comforting, to have the boy he had loved holding onto him and wishing him well.

Balthazar did let go, reluctantly, and sat back down in the chair.

“Now that that Feels Fest is over, I need you to tell me about Dean. What’s he like, his family, his eyes, ANYTHING!”

And so Castiel talked.

Cas talked about how he had first seen Dean, lying on a hospital stretcher all those months ago, bruised and lacerated and hurt and close to dying. He talked about how he had his part in saving his life, how he had hated the hospital until that point, and how Charlie Bradbury helped him realize how he was.

Cas talked about their first meeting, as disastrous as it was. He saw Balthazar’s mouth turn into a frown at Dean’s insults to his stuttering, smiled warmly at Cas’s details about his eyes, and almost cheered as he recounted Pamela Barnes’s most badass moment: shutting down Dean’s rant of anger and profanity.

Cas talked about how they had eventually bonded over their shared silences, Cas’s reading out loud (which he had continued to do every day until he was discharged), and their closeted natures.

Cas talked about their first kiss, and the resulting meeting with John Winchester.

Cas talked about Sam and John and let his anger spill over the edge and watched as Balthazar’s lip curled in disgust at the suspicions of parental abuse, and Cas had to refrain himself from laughing at the muttered curses from his best friend’s mouth, which were almost as horrifying as Gabriel’s own rants.

Cas talked about the color of Dean’s eyes, how they were like emeralds that glinted in an ethereal, almost angelic light, his multitude of freckles, his lean body, and how soft his lips were.

Cas talked about Dean’s love of rock music, his love affair with his 1967 Chevy Impala, his deep and abiding love for his younger brother, and his apparent love for him.

And after that, Cas continued to talk, about anything he wanted. He informed his friend about the friends he had made, how Gabriel and Anna and Michael and all of them were doing, how much he thought that Balthazar would’ve loved Charlie Bradbury and gotten along splendidly with her, school, and Crowley. He talked about the whole deal with Crowley a lot, getting it off of his chest and into the air.

To say Balthazar was angry at Cas was a pretty accurate approximation; to say he was furious at Crowley and his henchmen was an understatement of drastic proportions.

Cas had to sit there and watch as Balthazar, his dead friend who may-or-may-not be a hallucination or and angel, rove around the room, dispensing the absolute worst things he could ever call somebody, words that Cas wasn’t sure he had ever heard of, and those that Castiel wouldn’t use in any circumstances. He would’ve liked to know that Balthazar had been pretty nice and wholesome as they grew older, but as he reflected on past memories and experiences, Cas knew that this was the most accurate representation of Balthazar Sebastian Roche that his mind could muster.

Even though he wished Balthazar’s language was a little cleaner, Castiel was very very happy that he was here, even if he wasn’t a real person.

He wanted to believe that he was an angel or a ghost or something that at least had a pull in the real world, but in a way, his being a hallucination was nice. It meant that his own mind was ready, willing to change, and if that meant dredging up a figure from his past that meant so much to Cas to assist him in the transition to someone who was actually healthy, both physically and mentally, than Castiel had to give his internal workings some very profound thanks.

Eventually, his mind began to hum with the familiar feel of sleep, the sensation of velvet being pulled over his rampaging thoughts, quieting them and laying them down in a nest of comforting, silent down.

Cas felt his eyelids start to flutter, and Balthazar noticed this, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. He smiled softly, and through a yawn, Cas said, “Sorry, Balthy. Sleep c-c-calls.”

“It’s quite alright, Cassie. I’ve kept you up longer than you need to.”

As he fell slowly into sleep, Cas couldn’t help but say, “I wish you weren’t d-d-d-d-d-dead.”

His last image was Balthazar smiling sadly and saying, “Me, too.” before he disappeared into the veil of sleep that overtook Castiel Novak.

*~*~*

Pamela hadn’t intended to linger outside the door for long, but she had been drawn in by the boy’s almost delirious conversation with someone Castiel had called ‘Balthy’. She had an inkling that that was rather a nickname instead of an actual name, as she had no idea of anyone who would name their child that. Then again, it hadn’t been hard to deduce the boy’s name was Balthazar, and that was a pretty interesting name.

However, there were a few people in this town with interesting names, like Ion Matthews, and a girl in tenth grade named Hael. The former was a patient of hers who needed help with anxiety, and the latter was just someone she met a while ago.

After waiting for a few minutes, Pamela stuck her head inside of the room (which she noticed was Dean’s old room; irony was a bitch) and was pleased to find that Castiel was asleep. She watched him for a few minutes, marvelling at how peaceful and happy he seemed when he was asleep, not burdened by the events of the past few months.

To be honest, she had missed Castiel Novak quite a lot; ever since Dean had been discharged from the hospital, he had been allowed some reprieve from his shadowing duties, and he could better attend to school matters.

Her days had been consumed by appointment after appointment, some of them grief counseling and some of them psychological assistance. Also, Pamela was consulted in the matters of brain injury and others potentially psychologically damaging. As such, she had been asked to deduce the effects of Castiel’s brain injury.

In truth, the brutality of the assault made her livid.

Michael had given her the files himself, asking her to look at them in private before returning to work the next day with a full diagnosis and possible extraneous injuries. When she had gotten around to looking at them, Pamela nearly lost her mind, almost pulling out her hair in anger and fury.

Everyone in the town knew about Crowley, that much was clear. He was a menace, and he never even lifted a finger to someone else; it was always done by somebody else, someone who either owed him or was in his company already.

The kid had (indirectly) put ten kids in the hospital, all over a period of three years and none as severe as this. Usually, it was a broken wrist or a leg, maybe a little vandalism, but nothing as bad as potential brain trauma and one broken rib.

Castiel was the outlier in this case, and Pamela hated it so much.

The fact that someone could do so much damage to one person for refusing to do something that was less than legal, someone who was that much unhinged that he could willingly pack all that rage and ferocity into one complete beatdown and not get charged was bewildering.

She had not been the recipient of such bullying when she was in high school, and very little friends she knew had it this bad. Kids today were more ruthless, more cunning, and seemingly free of moral virtues. Pamela, unlike others, was not going to point a finger at violent video games or television shows, as people her age were wont to do. In truth, she believed that there were many sources, none of which were indicative of being the sole influence.

It was just too complicated, and Pamela knew it.

She did know the kid who had supposedly beaten up the boy so badly; in fact, she knew his father, and she could not say she was surprised. Azazel had been the talk of the hospital once before, after getting into a fight with an older boy, a prostitute he had encountered on the way home one night. After calling him a ‘fairy’, ‘faggot’, and other derogatory terms, Azazel and a friend had beaten the boy within an inch of his life. Now, the prostitute was only mobile in a wheelchair permanently, and he was alone with no family, who disapproved of his position as a whore.

His name was Gadreel, named after the angel who had let Lucifer into Heaven, but luckily for him, his boyfriend, a young man named Benny, stayed with him through his recovery. He had even proposed to him a few days ago, and Pamela had personally started crying.

But Azazel had put an end to his career, which was earning him money, and now they had to rely on Benny’s diner for the whole income. No one could deny that the kid had issues with violence, and Pamela was sure his father was not helping it.

Alastair Matthews was a creepy man, eyes shining with an almost unearthly light and a thin smile on his face. Pamela would’ve thought he was a pretty nice man except for the way that his voice seemed to only convey sinister intentions. Nasally voices often did that, especially combined with a thin frame, pasty complexion, and fingers practically made for holding scalpels.

It was almost unsettling how good he was at surgery, because of his growing smile that Pamela knew was under that mask. The scalpel was too close to him, too much a friend, and she was sure that he was nothing if not a little sadistic.

She always evaluated people as she saw them, it helped her get to know people better and know when to have them get help for something or if they just needed a nice cup of tea courtesy of Pamela Barnes. She had immediately pegged something off about him the moment she saw him, and watching him during surgery was enough to give her the certainty that he was sociopathic, at least.

Pam had heard he was hard on his son, but not in the areas that a parent is needed to be hard in, like grades or school or violence. He never offered an apologetic word to anyone his son had hurt, and he also never scolded his son either, something that rang alarm bells everywhere. But Alastair was a good surgeon, and Azazel was never formally proven to have beaten anybody up. He was too good at covering his tracks, and Pamela was forced to admit that that was probably how it was going to stay.

She watched as Castiel’s chest rose and fall serenely, and in the presence of that constant rhythm, she settled down into a chair. presumably one that Balthazar would’ve sat in if he was real, and worked on her forms. Michael had piled on her this week, and she had so many patient forms and prescription requests to file, that she was practically swimming in them.

On top of that, there were a total of ten perspective patients who needed psychological diagnoses. Pamela needed a pretty large amount of time to sift through the hundreds of conditions in order to even narrow them down a little more. She needed time, and Michael was certainly not going to give her any.

She wasn’t _psychic_! She didn’t know what the patient was and needed like _that_!

Pamela sighed and set her pen to the pad, writing down various possible mental conditions as she looked over her first patient’s file.

So the time passed, quite quickly. Patient after patient, file after file, and slow breath after slow breath, her mind maneuvered through work, and eventually, ten o’clock rolled around. Her watch beeped obnoxiously, and Pamela physically jumped before exhaustedly jamming the button that turned the damn alarm off.

Sighing tiredly, Pamela surveyed her work, and was proud to admit that she had nailed down four patients with only her knowledge and not using the Diagnostic and Statistical Model, Edition V, which she had at home.

She gathered her stuff in methodical silence, making sure that she was not making too much noise. Pam did not want Castiel to wake, not when his body and mind were recovering in the throes of velvety sleep.

When she closed Castiel’s door, it was 10:15 p.m. She walked to the desk, carrying her finished files to her desk and plopped them on it before turning off her lamp. She stopped by the mental health ward to remind Gadreel and Benny that visiting hours were over, to which they parted quietly and respectfully.

Benny was a big old sweetheart, as big as they come, with a modest reddish-brown beard and blue eyes that could charm the Devil right out of his socks. His Cajun accent was enough to warrant a bout of heavy flirtation on both sides before he admitted that he had boyfriend, to which Pam had smiled and congratulated him.

Ever the Southern gentleman, Benny walked her to her car, and though she did not need to have someone to escort her- they were in Lawrence, Kansas, for God’s sake- she appreciated the company nonetheless. They talked about her patients, his restaurant business, and somehow, they ended on the subject of Castiel.

Normally, there would be some sort of patient confidentiality, but sharing that he was gay and was having trouble expressing his feelings to someone wasn’t included, right?

Benny smiled a sad smile when she told him that his older brother was more than overly-religious, and that Cas was having some problems fully coming out.

“Well, I could talk with him, if that’s allowed.”

Pam smiled hesitantly.

“I’m not sure. Let me think about it, okay? It would help, but let’s just wait until he’s more recovered. Thanks for the offer, anyway!”

 **  
**Benny smiled that warm smile of his and waved goodbye before setting off confidently into the dark. Pam smiled at his retreating back before unlocking her car and driving home to sift through a marginally smaller pile of patient forms and diagnoses. Not her ideal evening, but she had had worse.


	14. Chapter 14

Room B-123 was silent, the thick blanket of sound- or thereof- shattered only by the sounds of Castiel’s slow and steady breathing. It was one of the only constants in a quickly turning and falling world that Dean was existing in. Besides the abuse of his father and the almost constant throbbing of his body from one injury or another, it was the only comfort he took other than Cas’s own presence.

The lights, bright and artificial, stared down at him, as if they were waiting for the inevitable conversation to play out. He didn’t really know how or why, but Dean knew that he was here for one reason, and that was to find out who the hell Balthazar was.

Castiel, somewhat subconsciously, knew it too, and as the days had drawn nearer and nearer to this day, when Dean visited him for the sole purpose of knowing his story, he had relied even more on Balthazar’s kind words and his almost constant presence to get him through the day, as well as to bolster the courage that he had in order to even get through explaining it.

Also, Dean had kept his curiosity in check, refusing to look on the computer for any information, to ask people who had been close to him what happened, or anything like that. It had been tough, keeping the pulsing tide of a ravenous need to know, something he decided everyone had. He guessed that that was why secrets were so magnetic and all-consuming; any knowledge kept from the public knowledge made it alluring, irresistible.

Dean wondered if his abuse, if it counted as a secret, was so alluring.

At this point in his life, he knew he was slipping from the cliff’s edge, drawing closer and closer to a fall that he was sure he wouldn’t survive. He had hoped he could’ve held on long enough for Sam to get to college and get some scholarships and get married before he let go and plummeted into the depths of misery. He knew that all his father had wrought was beginning to show its face to others, in flinches at nothing and paleness at the mention of his father’s name and the bruises that would sometimes peek out at the world like wary clownfish peeking out at the ocean from the safety of their anemone.

He had a worry that Bobby was suspicious of the whole deal, judging from the looks of concern that lasted longer than they should’ve.

But worse than that, Dean was worried that Castiel had known all along that something was wrong, and that he had held back as well, for fear of making it worse.

He wanted to tell him, he did. In fact, he wanted to scream it out into the world, into the police station, and have it all done with. Dean Winchester longed for the day when his father would not touch him anymore, when his diseased and malicious soul would no longer be a presence over his shoulder.

He wanted to be free.

It was just that Dean wasn’t sure if he was worth the salvation.

His body, his soul, and his mind had been maimed, raped, beaten, starved, and tortured with the worst kinds of pain over and over and over, and he wasn’t sure if the angels he wasn’t sure existed would even spare a glance for the poor excuse for a boy that groveled at their feet. He had been cut, hammered, ripped and bound in a web of suffering, and no one comes out of something like that without scars.

Who would want to save someone as far gone as Dean?

Who?

Castiel stirred beside him, drawing Dean determinedly back to the present. Unconsciously, he let his hand intertwine itself with Cas’s, and he watched as the blue eyes he had come to admire in dreams open, blink away the sluggish fog of dreams, and focus on his own.

And Dean almost gasped aloud.

They say that the eyes are a window to the soul, and up until that moment, Dean had called bullshit. There was no such thing that could see into the depths of a human being and have them be displayed in all their glory and beauty. It was all a con, a way to delude himself, make himself believe that such a thing was real and comforting, to assuage his fears.

But now, it clicked quite clearly into place, and Dean couldn’t help but retract his opinion on such a thing.

Cas’s eyes were clear, clearer than any ocean or sky he had ever beheld with his own verdant eyes, and they pierced his own with such a clarity and soft-edged determinedness that it was almost inhuman. But as he looked deeper, Dean could see the soft, golden thing he had held to himself covetously like Smaug held his treasure in his darkest days, and it was radiant as the sun above the earth.

In his eyes, Dean saw no trace of the haunted and reserved boy that he had fallen in love with anymore. No, Dean Winchester saw the purity of a survivor, someone who had shaken off the wool over his eyes and transformed into someone new, someone who was healthier, happier, and most importantly, livelier.

“D-d-dean.” Cas rasped, voice unused from sleep, but to Dean, it sounded like the most beautiful sound on Earth.

So, instead of a normal greeting, something he knew he should use, Dean shut everything out and kissed him. He could feel Castiel’s shock beneath him, but it quickly faded away into another kiss, and another and another. By the time they parted, both boys breathing quite heavily, Cas was firmly rooted in reality, and Dean was sure that that was the greatest experience he had ever had with anyone, much less Castiel.

“Well, hello to you too.” Cas said, smiling a little.

“Sorry, Cas. I-I couldn’t help--”

“I g-get it, D-Dean. Trust me, I got it.”

Dean blushed furiously, and sat back in silence, just basking in the warm glow that seemed to permeate the room, before saying, “You slept long enough, Sleeping Beauty. How are you feeling?”

Cas shifted a little in his bed, discomfort displayed clearly on his face as he answered. “My injuries are healing nicely, but my broken rib hurts a little, and I’m still hallucinating, though not as badly as a few days ago.”

Dean laughed, and said, “I hope you haven’t seen the unicorns on the wall and the floor turning into jelly or some crazy shit like that.”

“No, none of that. Maybe one or two people that aren’t there, and perhaps one angel, who looks suspiciously like you.”

Dean smiled warmly, grasping Cas’s hand in his own, marvelling at the softness of his palms. Cas smiled as well, rubbing comforting circles on the back of his hand with his thumb. It was an altogether pleasant experience, and for maybe five minutes, they sat like that, just enjoying the silence and the company of each other.

Finally, obeying the intense pulls of curiosity in his gut, Dean breathed in deeply before saying, “Cas, I have to ask you a question.”

Cas smirked, saying “It’s a little early for a marriage proposal, D-Dean.”

Dean’s eyebrows shot up higher than he thought possible, and Cas laughed at the sight of it, a deep and happy laugh that made Dean’s heart jump up and soar into the sky. It was beautiful, something he hadn’t heard from him before, and all at once, his mind wanted to hear it all the time, make sure that it never stopped.

But Dean pushed those thoughts away for now, wanting to clear this whole mess up right away.

“Not what I was asking, but I’ll work on it. I just need to know who Balthazar is.”

Cas’s face slipped for an instant, and Dean saw that shade of his boyfriend, the one he had known for a month or more, slip back into existence, before Cas came back to reality once again, smile smaller and less joyful.

He looked over to another chair, one that was positioned on the other side of the bed, Dean followed his movements, curious as to why he would look to an empty space. He watched as Castiel’s attention firmly lodged itself to that empty space, and he was even more confused when Cas said aloud, “Are you sure? I mean, I d-d-don’t know if I c-can---”

He fell silent, as if the invisible presence in the chair was speaking. Cas nodded a few times, looking more determined and comfortable, and Dean realized he was suitably freaked out. It wasn’t every day that your boyfriend (his mind squealed at that word) was talking to someone that wasn’t there.

Finally, Cas nodded, and turned to Dean, who was looking more than a little shocked. He gestured to the invisible person and said, “That’s Balthazar, in the chair.”

Dean glanced at the chair, then back at Cas, not really sure what to say.

“I g-grew up with him when I was younger, before I knew you and before I really had any other friends. He was the closest person to me outside of my own family, which I’m sure you know is really important to me.”

Dean nodded, partly in agreement with that and partially to encourage him to go on.

“Well, we were the best friends everyone wanted to be like; we d-d-did everything together, went to the park together. My mother, before she d-died, said we were the Siamese Twins of Lawrence, never apart and always together.”

Cas looked sadly off into the distance, neither at Dean nor ‘Balthazar’, as if he was reminiscing. Feeling supportive, Dean rubbed Cas’s hand comfortingly, and rejoiced inwardly at the look of bliss in his boyfriend’s eyes.

He took a shuddering breath, tears in his eyes, and said, “Anyway, one day, about three years ago, Balthazar asked me what it would be like to be g-gay, something I had never thought about, much less talked about in our little community. I told him that it d-d-didn’t mean anything special, just that it would be like having a g-g-girlfriend except she’s a he.”

Cas was coming close to crying now, shaking every so often with unshared sobs that Dean knew would come out sooner or later.

“And after that, he-- he-- he kissed me, just like I kissed you that first time all those months ago. He wanted to be happy, that much I knew, but he asked me to say something, anything because he was crying and he was so scared of what he had done and he wanted me to tell him it was okay and that I was okay and that he would always be my friend and I d-d-d-didn’t.”

And all of a sudden, Castiel was crying, sobbing harder than he had ever sobbed, and Dean was there, holding him as he let the tears he had been trying to keep inside spill over the edge and out onto the hospital sheets. He sobbed for who knows how long, and Dean kept holding him, running his hand through his hair and whispering words of encouragement into his ear.

In between the gasps and sobs, Cas said, “I should’ve said something, anything.” over and over and over. And Dean whispered, “It’s okay, Cas, it’s okay.” and time went on.

Eventually, Cas’s tears subsided, but neither boy moved, and he continued speaking, albeit in a smaller voice.

“Three d-days later, he killed himself. After that, he haunted my d-dreams and my d-d-d-days and nights and my mind. I just wanted quiet, peace and quiet, and to sleep at night without waking up screaming and sobbing. Everyone said mean things, too, because after a while, everyone knew he was g-gay, and I kept myself in the dark, afraid to be c-called out and hated like he was.

“So, I went to C-Crowley, and asked for pills to numb the pain.”

Dean could see it now: a distraught and pale boy, eyes blue as the sea, wrapped in the heat of the boiler room, desperately seeking for an escape, anything to take away his grief, and his love.

“Eventually, I g-g-got really d-depressed, and I owed him a lot of money, and Balthazar still haunted me, so I tried to leave this world forever.” With that, Cas held up his wrists, displaying the vertical scars that reminded him of the pain he had suffered. Dean reached up and ghosted his hand over one of them, and Cas shivered a little against the touch, eyes brimming with tears once again.

“You can g-guess the rest. I woke up here, in this d-damn hospital that I d-don’t even want to work in, and I spent weeks here, not talking in g-group therapy and generally wishing I had died. And then Balthazar showed up and helped me g-get better, and then I was d-d-discharged, and then there was you.”

He turned to Dean then, hand cupping the side of his face, and he leaned into him, tucking himself right into the crook of his shoulder, and they stayed there for a while, sitting and leaning into each other, letting the hours tick by.

Dean wasn’t sure how to say anything in the wake of this kind of revelation, and all of the ripples it created beat him over and over. This was someone who had gone through just as much as he had, someone who understood his pain--

\--no, not all of it--

\--someone who was just like him. Cas had endured the worst possible torture, the betrayal of his own mind against him, the death of someone Dean had no doubt would be his boyfriend if he had been alive now, someone that he cared about deeply.

It was one thing to be tortured by the living, another by the dead.

“I’m so sorry, Cas.” He said finally, voice barely a whisper above the muted sounds of the hospital.

There was a huff of breath, then “I’m sorry, too.”

Cas sat up slowly, breathing deeply and steadily, and he wiped the tears away from his cheeks, the ones that still lay there unshed. After a moment of silence, he said, “There’s no changing the past, now, so d-don’t think for a moment that I don’t love you any less. Balthazar, if he was here, would probably be in my position, but he isn’t, as he has so faithfully reminded me. You are just as important to me as him, maybe even more so.”

Dean looked at Castiel Novak, his only rock in this world, the one who had saved him and who had suffered so much in return, the boy he loved more than life itself, and smiled.

“Does this mean you’re my boyfriend now, or not?”

Cas laughed, pulling Dean’s heartstrings, and leaned towards him, mouth just barely an inch from his. Dean felt the breath on his lips, feather-soft, and he couldn’t move, couldn’t make a sound until he heard him say “I think so.” before kissing him softly.

And the only thought that Dean had in his head was, Oh, thank God!

*~*~*

Later on, while Castiel fell into a peaceful sleep at around 9:00, Dean kissed him once on the forehead, gave his hand a final squeeze, and walked out of the hospital room, but not without looking at the empty chair that had held ‘Balthazar’. It sat there, almost looking fondly on him, before Dean closed the door and the chair disappeared from his view.

An hour or so ago, Cas had noted, quite sleepily, that Balthazar wasn’t sitting in the chair anymore, that he had gone back to Heaven or in his mind. Both were mentioned, and Dean wasn’t sure if Cas believed one or the other. It didn’t matter, really; whether his dead friend had been an angel or if he was a figment of his boyfriend’s imagination, Balthazar Roche had saved him, and Cas was infinitely better now that he had appeared once again.

He knew what he had looked like, thanks to Cas’s almost photographic description of messy blonde hair, blue eyes like his own, and an almost eternal smirk on his face. It was a little disconcerting to hear him talk about Balthazar with such reverence and clear adoration, but Dean had to remind himself that he was Cas’s, and that he was dead.

It saddened him greatly to know the reason as to why he had become who he was today, but at the same time, it was as if a weight had been lifted off of Castiel’s shoulders and Dean could physically see him getting better.

And he had a lot to thank for for that.

“You look like a man who’s had something very good happen to him.”

The Southern voice drew him out of his reverie, and he turned to see a bear of a man leaning against the wall outside of Cas’s room. His eyes were a kind blue, and he was smiling kindly, but that didn’t help the fact that Dean didn’t know who he was.

“No offense, but what makes you so sure?” Dean asked, a slight edge to his tone.

The man shrugged nonchalantly, and smiled brilliantly once again. He looked nice, younger than thirty, but he had this sort of wisdom and presence around him that made him feel older.

“You have the same smile on your face that I had when I proposed to my boyfriend a week ago. I know you’re too young for marriage, so I’m gonna go with a relationship, yeah?”

Blushing, Dean couldn’t help but nod. The man smiled again, and stuck out his hand to shake, a massive and calloused hand from years of hard work. He took it graciously, and the man said, “Name’s Benny. My boyfriend’s named Gadreel, he’s in the mental health ward, just down the hall.”

“Dean. If you don’t mind me asking--”

“It’s cool. He was beaten nearly to death by some asshole who called him a faggot and a fairy, and now he’s stuck in a wheelchair, with no hope of recovery. He’s depressed, and he has PTSD and anxiety attacks.”

Dean winced visibly, and said, “I’m so sorry. You said you proposed to him?”

Benny did not speak; instead, he chose to hold out the hand that Dean had just shaken, and there, on his ring finger, was a simple gold band that glittered in the hospital lights. There was something engraved around it, not a string of words, but it looked like wings.

“Congratulations, man. He must be a lot happier now.”

“Yeah, he’s flying high when he’s not being plagued by memories of that night.” Benny said, bitterness tainting the happiness that had enveloped the man not ten minutes ago.

“Do they know who did it, or--”

“They have suspicions, but the asshat who beat my fiance so close within an inch of his life is practically invisible to the authorities. Honestly, the damage is done, so I don’t want to drag this back up into the light. Besides, Gad wouldn’t be any better if I did. It would bring up some bad memories.”

Dean nodded sympathetically, before asking, “What exactly were you doing outside of Cas’s room?”

Benny smiled sheepishly, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.

“Truth is, that therapist with the black hair and the kick-ass attitude had some suspicions about him and I’m guessing you, and wanted me to go in there and convince him to make a move already. But I’m assuming that that’s already happened, so my work is done. I was gonna offer some advice that would give him some courage or something like that, nothing too bad.”

Dean laughed at his description of Pamela, and deep inside, he felt that he owed her a lot more than he intended. She had probably the entire thing from the start, probably when he was still in here for jumping in front of that truck a long time ago. This was all one huge, life-changing event that Dean could have never seen coming, and Pamela Barnes was the one who made it all possible.

“Well, that’s nice to hear, Benny. Have a nice night, and congratulations for your engagement.” Dean said, exhaustion beginning to weigh down his eyelids.

 **  
**“Thanks, Dean. Don’t screw it up, cause it’s all worth it in the end.” Benny said, clapping him on the shoulder before walking down the hallway, whistling some unknown Cajun tune that made Dean’s mind hum pleasantly as he walked the opposite way, towards the exit and towards his bed, all the while thinking about his boyfriend and how amazing it was.


	15. Chapter 15

There was very little that settled in Castiel’s chest as well and as beautifully as the certainty that Dean was his boyfriend, almost as if it was always there.

Granted, it sounded incredibly cheesy, and the whole possessiveness of a relationship kind of confused him (calling someone ‘mine’ is weird, isn’t it?), but nevertheless, Cas was marinating in his own pool of happiness, a sun-dappled lake in a secluded wood. Not one thing could touch this kind of joy, that Cas was sure of.

Crowley could probably beat him over and over, but he would never even touch this almost sacred feeling in his chest.

Michael would never need to know- at least, not now. Sure, keeping secrets blew up in everyone’s faces, and Castiel knew it better than anyone. But this secret was one that actually needed to be kept from his eldest brother, something that both him and Dean had decided on.

After he had gotten discharged, Dean had been a real trooper, helping Cas out with the schoolwork he had missed and had been unable to do, since he had had brain trauma. Speaking of which, the hallucinations had died down quite a bit, with only a few instances of voices speaking where there was no one and the occasional glimpse of Balthazar on passing street corners, looking smug and amazing.

Dean had no qualms of assisting him with math, as it was one of the few subjects that he actually reigned supreme in. In a sense, he was like Cas, just reversed; he loved math and science, and his English was passable, but not too special. Because of that, he became a valuable study resource for Cas, and his math grade drastically improved- which really meant his B had become a hard-earned A-. There had been quite a few celebratory kisses exchanged when Dean passed his English test for Beowulf, an insanely hard test that barely anyone got above a B on.

Dean managed an A.

That was something that both boys had somewhat gotten used to: the increasing frequency of kissing, as well as the surprising joy that they found in it. It was a weird thing, to kiss someone; it was really just shoving your mouth against another person, someone you placed higher on a pedestal than others. But, for some reason, this knowledge didn’t perturb Cas from missing the moments when they kissed, even if it was for less than a second.

It was such an intimate thing, and deep in his heart, Dean liked it a lot more than anyone expected to him.

Slowly, the limp in Dean’s left leg had righted itself, and Cas’s cognitive functions had a quick comeback, and for the first time in a while, neither boy thought that they were permanently, physically damaged in any way.

Of course, John Winchester did not let up on his punishments on Dean, but bruises and the occasional sore area were the only recurring indications of abuse, and he made sure that they were well-hidden.

He felt extraordinarily bad, because Cas had opened up to him so much about Balthazar, had basically laid himself out for Dean to see, and now, he was soaring in the stars. He wanted that happiness, that kind of freedom that only came from confession, but there was still a deeply rooted belief that he wasn’t deserving of such freedom, even if he now had someone to love who loved him back.

Love was freedom of a sort, but it wasn’t a cure for the larger problem; just a distraction from the pain that never let up.

The physical aspect of his abuse was normal, ending in bruises and twisted wrists and toothaches. Emotionally, Dean wasn’t sure if he could say it was good or bad; Cas was a soothing balm against the painful rash of raw hurt. Sexually, Dean didn’t want to go down that road.

But the verbal component was by far the worst.

The way that John was so effective in his words was almost astounding, given the large quantities of alcohol that he consumed as if it was the lifeblood he could not live without. No matter the quantity, his words were sharp and clear, and they stabbed over and over into his gut. He no longer called Dean ‘stupid’, ‘a failure’, or anything like that because it simply didn’t hurt him as much. He continued with the daily regimen of ‘faggot’, ‘pussy’, and ‘cocksucker’, but he eventually added full sentences and muttered phrases to his repertoire.

He would say that Dean was ‘waste of space’, ‘worthless piece of shit’, ‘disgrace to your mother’s memory’, and, if he had a good day, ‘murderer’.

If he was still feeling especially spiteful, John would say, “You gotta take care of Sammy, boy. He comes first.” He would whisper that into his ear in darkened rooms, when Dean checked out of his mind, when he defiled every inch of his son’s existence over and over until either one of them passed out, the former from lack of energy and the latter from the pain.

But, if there was one thing that hurt Dean the most, it wasn’t the rape or the verbal threats to ‘cut his tongue out of his mouth and staple it to the wall’ or even the punches to the head; it was the silence which Sammy used to cope with the thought that it was his fault.

Even if he never said it aloud, Dean could tell that Sam believed that this was all his doing, that his health and survival was sapping the life out of his brother, and that he would die at his indirect hand. It shone especially bright in his downcast eyes, spoke in his shuffled steps, and sang in his slumped shoulders at the dinner table. The flinches at his brother’s cries of pain. The covering of his ears to avoid the sickening noises from his father’s room.

Somehow, though, Sam did well at school, taking harder classes online than some did in their full high school career, and he racked up AP credits like tickets from a machine at Chuck-E Cheese’s. Every single teacher had something nice to say about him, and there were still some teachers who actually like Dean as well.

The lunch group had steadily become more comfortable, and Gabriel and even Anna joined the conversations, as well as a few new kids. Jo Harvelle used to go to their school, but she had been taken out freshman year for home school before being accepted back into Kripke High School just last week. Someone said to Dean and Cas that she had been kicked out because she threatened a bully with a wicked knife, and when they asked her, Jo simply shrugged and said, “He was asking for it, pinching my ass like I was a stupid cheerleader or something!”

Ash was Jo’s older brother, a senior this year who had an incredible knack for hacking computers like nobody’s business. He had been largely nameless for most of the year, and the only indication of his presence was the occasional blaring of the My Little Pony  theme song from the announcements and the changing of the school menu to include fish tacos and beer. He had a mullet, which, surprisingly, no one had a problem with.

The newest kid was named Jessica, one of Sam’s smart friends, though Dean and Cas each admitted to each other that she was not only smart, but attractive as well. It was natural sort of beauty, the kind that is almost unfair for freshman or sophomores to have, but she didn’t flaunt it or shove it in anyone’s faces. She played it up a little with the hipster-ish outfits she chose, with lots of sweaters with intricately knitted patterns and the vintage glasses on her nose which Jessica actually needed, a point she stressed quite vehemently on the first day she joined them. Practically everyone could see the beginnings of a crush between Sam and Jess; it was practically a certainty in everyone’s eyes.

Speaking of budding relationships, Cas and Dean were admittedly fine as the weeks went on. Neither of them were fully comfortable making it super-public, and Dean in particular felt awkward doing something as simple as holding hands. Cas had originally thought it kind of silly for Dean to feel that way, until he had asked him about it one day while they were doing their homework.

He had looked into Cas’s eyes, straight on, and with no hesitation said, “It’s such an intimate thing, holding hands. It’s like a connection, a symbol that you and I are connected through something more personal than friendship. It says that you are something I need, and that I am something you need.”

Cas just nodded, a little turned on, and from then on, the only times they held hands was when they were either alone or when they were around their group of friends. No matter how they knew, every single person that both boys called friends had found out about them at one point or another, and their reactions were either relief, exasperation that they hadn’t gotten together, or just plain kindness from the newbies, who had not been present when the supposed ‘sexual tension’ had been astronomically high.

Or so Gabriel had said obnoxiously loud, before Sam had clamped his hand over his mouth.

As for everyone else, not one person seemed either to care if they knew or they didn’t show it if they did know. There was a little apprehension around Crowley and his gang, but they never approached them about anything, and the only times that the gang saw them were in small doses across the hall or the occasional glance at the back of the class.

Michael showed no signs of knowing about it either, the times that Dean came over to their house to help Cas catch up with school. If anything, he was so blinded by religion and his work that nothing short of a full-on make out session would convince him of the possibility. Cas had reasoned once that Michael was so wrapped up in his work that he would only feel hot if there was a nuclear blast nearby, and even then, he would remark that the room was kind of warm. Dean had laughed himself to tears at that, something that Cas was proud of.

Despite all of the weight released from both of the boys’ shoulders, neither Cas nor Dean were very good at dating, considering the lack of experience. Add in the fact that it had to be a secret from a large percentage of the people they knew, and neither boy was sure if they could even call it a relationship.

All they had was the hope that they could last until their graduation the following year, and then they would be free of their separate hells, as different as they could be. Cas was still technically in the worst place for him, something Dean seriously doubted until Cas told him straight-out that he didn’t want to volunteer at the hospital.

“Seriously?” Dean had asked, a little incredulous. They were in Cas’s room, the door was closed for ‘studying purposes’ (Which was actually a valid reason, to avoid the noise of the rest of the Novak house), and he currently was carding his hands through Cas’s bed-ridden hair, which he maintained was impossible to manipulate.

“Yep,” Cas replied matter-of-factly. “I never wanted to have a c-career in medicine, and I still d-d-don’t.”

“Then why did you volunteer in the first place?”

“Michael.”

Dean was quiet for a minute, pondering his boyfriend’s older brother. The few times they had spoken, Michael Novak had been civil but cold, focused but at the same time, distracted. There was little on his mind other than work and the relatively undeveloped need to protect his family, as he was in charge of three pseudo-teenagers, with Anna already in college and Gabe a senior. He did seem to be a little commandeering, a little too narrow-minded, but Dean had never considered the fact that he was forcing Cas to do something against his will.

He had been on that side of the track too many times, and to be honest, it didn’t feel the same as the things that Dean had to do almost daily.

“He’s d-decided that I, like my sister and my brother, will be included into the family business of medicine. My father, before he d-d-died, was a g-great surgeon. He was able to bring any patient back from the brink of death, like Michael d-does now. In fact, that’s where he learned it from, my father. But then he d-died, and well, here we are today.”

“What about your mom? Was she in medicine?”

Cas shifted a little in his lap, but Dean refused to stop running his hands through his hair. It was one of those things he found immensely enjoyable, something that he had actually not expected. In a sense, it was cathartic, because the stress of his day and the muddled but still present memories of his father and any of the things he had had to do disappeared in the repetitiveness of the motion.

“No. She was more poetic than anything else, but she never g-g-got to publish any of her work. Father was a little….. c-conservative in that area. So, it became her fantasy, a hobby she couldn’t fully partake in.”

They sat in silence for a while, Cas thinking about his dead mother and Dean pondering the sadness that must have pervaded Cas’s mother’s life, not being able to do the thing she loved, wanted to do because her husband simply didn’t want her to. Whether or not she complied was moot; she must have been so very sad.

“What was her name?” Dean asked suddenly.

Cas smiled sadly to himself and his answer was nothing but a whisper, a grief-filled sigh of air.

“Hester. Hester Novak.”

Dean nodded to himself, and leaned forward to kiss Cas on the top of the head. His mother had done the same thing to him when he was in the aftershocks of crying, the sobs having subsided but the sadness itself still lingering like the remnants of a disease conquered- or endured. Mary would kiss the top of his head, like a sign that everything was okay, that the worst was over and that she still loved him. It was funny, Dean thought, how much children needed their parents’ love so desperately that their minds automatically assumed that any mistake or wrong-doing eliminated said love. He guessed it was a defense mechanism, a kind of drive to prove to themselves that such small errors couldn’t change some things, that concepts like love were all-enduring.

He could’ve used some of that right now.

“My mother’s name was Mary,” he blurted out, because he felt the need to at least get her name out there.

Cas didn’t make a sound, which Dean took as a sign to continue.

“I can’t remember a lot about her, but what I do remember is all I need. She had this blonde hair like sunlight, the kind that filters through the trees at sunset. Her eyes are my eyes, which I think is a nice way for me to remember her: every time I look in the mirror.

“She was so nice, as warm as a sunbeam and just as bright. She would always kiss the top of my head when I was sad, make me apple pie, and cut the crusts off of my sandwiches because I didn’t like them.”

He was silent for a moment, basking in the warmth that memories of her brought with them. It was like the heat of a roaring fire on a cold day, that moment when you come in from the cold and there’s just that one feeling that lasts for barely a second, a ghostly whisper of tension and then relief.

“She died of an aneurysm when my brother was born.”

It was said matter-of-factly, as if there was no other way to say it. That was how Dean felt about the whole thing: it was just there, not really sad or full of grief. Sure, he missed his mother and sometimes he wished that his father had been the one to die instead of her, but he’d only been four when she died, way too young to experience most, if not all of Mary Winchester in life. Her death had robbed him of the grief he should’ve felt, the sadness that death imparts to all who remember the one it steals.

It made Dean kind of guilty, to not feel especially sad about his mother, because he assumed that because he didn’t feel that way, the way that other kids feel about death, that something was inherently wrong with him, yet another to add to the list that his father made for him. He supposed it came with the depression and bipolar disorder and the suicide attempt: death no longer seemed sad or even terrifying; it felt like relief.

It would happen without warning most days, and there was no real recollection of how it happened until later on, when Dean looked back on the day. He would be happy and talkative and just plain normal, sometimes even enthusiastic and optimistic, and then he wasn’t. It was a split-second transformation, almost completely unrecognizable. Dean, having mastered the art of disguising his pain, could easily put on a happy face and the day would proceed as normal. But under the mask, under the veil he had placed over himself, Dean was floundering in water too deep to touch the bottom. He was drowning every day in a flood of indifference and numb sadness, and there was little he could do.

The medication took the edge off of it, mostly. It was a blessing when Dean could even feel the slightest amounts of happiness in his mire of depression, and he clung to it like a lifeline. When that happened, he could stop pretending he was happy for a while, and even when he was so dragged down, he could talk with Cas and Sam and Jo and Jess (who was quickly becoming his favorite person--other than Cas, of course) and actually feel engaged. Most of the time, when he was in his funk of sorts, Dean would feel disconnected from everything else around him, and he wouldn’t feel the need to join in or even make an effort to smile.

A sensation ghosted across his cheek, and Dean was startled out of his reverie. In confusion, he looked down to see Cas’s finger withdrawing from his face, and it was shining a little, as if there was a drop of water--

He hadn’t realised he had been crying, but apparently, Cas had, and as he cried silently, tears spilling down his face, his stuttering, caring, amazing boyfriend held him, silently shifting until Dean’s head lay in his lap, and his own hands were carding through Dean’s shorter hair. It was odd, being on this side of the mirror: usually, Dean was the one taking care of Cas, not the other way around.

It was nice for a change, because Cas had sense the pressure building inside of Dean. Whatever he was holding inside, whatever secret he guarded with his very life, it would erupt soon, either of his own will or irregardless of his wants.

Cas wanted to cheer, to be happy that soon, the weight would be lifted off of Dean’s shoulders and he could actually try to be happy for a change. But all he could think about, as he cradled his grief-stricken boyfriend in his lap, was that such a thing could kill Dean.

 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeppers, this chapter is a little long, but there is a reason for it: it's the beginning of the end. 
> 
> Don't worry, there will be a lot more to the story still, including happy moments, but for now, this is where things begin to wrap up and that one horrible man we all know and hate gets his comeuppance. 
> 
> However, this chapter could be a little graphic, at least in its implications, so be warned. 
> 
> BTW, I tried to make the rape kit examination as accurate as possible in real life, because the issue needs to be presented as such; it would be a slight against all rape victims if I trivialized such a necessary and invasive procedure. 
> 
> Again, apologies for the wait and brace yourselves for this angst-fest.

He was stumbling, clutching at himself as he raggedly weaved through the doors to Bleeding Heart Memorial Hospital. His breath came in heavy bursts, inflamed by hoarse shouting and thick with sobs only just held in.

Dean’s whole body hurt, something he wasn’t truly accustomed to; usually, it was either one small thing or another, like a bruised section of his arm or maybe the soreness of his rear, both feelings he often pushed to the side.

Most nights, he could get through it without having to feel a thing.

Most nights, this systematic fouling of his body was escapable, his Sanctuary always open.

Most nights, Dean didn’t have the tragedy of remembering what took place.

Most nights, when John Winchester had his way with him, Dean could just melt away into his mind and forget all that had ever happened, discard every single disgusting, gut-wrenching moment of this wretched life, could come to his senses later without having to know how wrong it was.

But not this time, not tonight.

Dean knew the pressure had been building, had been mounting up inside him like a revolution intent on overthrowing the tyrannical rule of routine. His life had begun to settle, in the best and the worst ways, into normalcy. The good and the bad were evenly matched, a timid balance kept together by the thinnest of threads that encompassed his soul. Memories of Cas blotted out memories of John Winchester. Happy moments with the lunch group (Gabe had elected to call them ‘Team Free Will’, something no one liked but neglected to change) overwhelmed the phantom sensations of dragging fingers on bare skin. The sense of peace triumphed over the turbulence of the Winchester Life, where fathers had no rules and sons had no purchase against his wishes.

There was no way he could have survived this long with just the happiest of memories. There had to be a catch, a hitch in the works, a wrench in the muddled but livable machine of his life.

Tonight, it was her.

He pushed through the group of people at the front desk, ignoring the squawks of the people behind him, and his delirious mind felt pity for those he had just cut in line. Maybe they needed this appointment, maybe they had a terminal disease and this was their one chance--

No, they didn’t know. They didn’t know how long he had endured this, the systematic tearing down of his life, ripping his virtues down to shreds and spitting on the memory of someone he had lost. They didn’t know what it was like to be yelled at, beaten and raped and maimed and slapped and cut over and over and over until you weren’t sure if there was anything else before it, any goodness that even compared to the horrors you became accustomed to.

No, they didn’t know.

The woman at the front desk’s name tag read Missouri Moseley, and Dean had barely any time to wonder if she had been a friend of theirs when they were younger before he leaned close and said, “Ma’am?”

She looked up, taking in the outraged people in the line and Dean’s panicked and tear-stained face. Her eyes hardened, and he could feel the sass rolling off of her in waves.

“Sir, I know that sometimes, waiting in line may seem like a formality and that you think that you deserve to be here for some stupid reason or other like the sniffles or maybe a pain in your chest that you think is heartburn when it’s really just a fluke, but you need to wait in line for a chance to speak to me, so you need to scoot your ass----”

“I need a rape kit.” Dean all-but-shouted, the words leaping out of his mouth like poisoned vipers out of a hole in the wall. The sound around him died down in his ears, and he numbly wondered if he had screamed it or if he had whispered it, but he did not look to see.

Missouri’s rant stopped, he could see her brain contemplating the news she had just received. No doubt, she remembered him now, having been one of the nurses who attended to him during his time at the hospital five or so months before. And now, the damaged boy was confessing to something horrible, something more detestable in her mind than anything else in the world.

Missouri Moseley had not been the victim of rape, but she used to work in the cities, where it was much more common and much more difficult to treat. The victims were hysterical, usually, and girls too young to be afforded such a misfortune. She had had to hold her tongue around them, watch as they stumbled back into the arms of their rapist, and cry silently to herself at night just to keep herself from breaking down on the job.

And here she was, sitting across from a boy she had watched with more than a little disdain (she hated people who attempted suicide; to her, it seemed like the easy way out. Granted, she knew it was a prejudice to assume such a thing, and it made her no better than the ones who pushed them to it, but Missouri tried to discard that opinion), and now, the puzzle pieces clicked in her head, and everything became a little clearer.

Her eyes softened a little, sympathy filling her features, but there was a fierce determination in her eyes that somehow made Dean feel more secure, like he could trust her. She had seen things, he realized, and she was not about to let something like that beat her.

“I’ll get you set up in a private examination room in a minute, Mr…..”

“...Winchester. Dean Winchester.”

Missouri did not smile, for this was no happy matter. But her eyes were comforting enough that Dean felt more than a little bit okay, and he went to sit down on a chair for a few minutes. He repressed the urge to groan in pain as his backside hit the usually soft cushion, but the wince was easy to see anyway. He held himself quietly, not crying just yet, but old tears still drying on his face.

It was a good thing Cas wasn’t here to see him, Dean mused. He would’ve been absolutely shell-shocked at how shitty Dean looked. He had run straight out of the house in clothes he had hurriedly put on in a locked room, before escaping out the window and into the Impala, keys in hand. His shirt was a few days old, and his jeans were greasy and oily from working with Bobby, but he had had no time. And now, he was self-consciously sitting in a hospital waiting room, waiting to tell a woman he had never known how his father had violated him physically, verbally, and sexually for almost-- how long had it been?

Dean struggled to get his mind in order. He was burning up inside, memories caught in a firestorm of pain and struggle, and every single thing in his head was the same picture of his father’s goddamn demonic smile. The yellow teeth flickered back and forth from teeth to tombstones, and diseased gums pulsed and glistened. Sallow skin stretched taut like leather slithered through his memories like a snake, eroding away any happiness once contained in them. He felt as if he were caught in a whirlwind, a tornado of his father’s presence, every thing he had even seen and known replaced with the dark eyes and grim smile and he wasn’t sure if he could do this and---

“Dean?”

The voice brought him back from his mind like an anchor being pulled to the surface, and his eyes opened to see Missouri in front of him, looking concerned.

“Can you follow me, please?”

Dean nodded haltingly, and stood up to follow the African-American nurse down the hall and into a private examination room. He thought he felt the eyes of everyone in the building on him, staring at the back of his head as if to bore a hole into it and extract information. But he ignored it the best he could.

The room was quiet and empty, save for a large plastic sheet on the floor, upon which Missouri gestured he stand. Dean obeyed soundlessly, tears brimming on the edges of his eyes, and turned to face her.

“Honey, I’m going to ask you to take off your clothes.”

Dean stared at her numbly, not quite sure why he wasn’t moving. Slowly, haltingly, he stripped off his sweat-soaked shirt. The wet fabric fell with a damp slap! to the sheet, and was closely followed by his jeans, also damp. He grimaced as he undressed, feeling his aching body retaliate for his movement, stabbing pains echoing through his veins. The shoes and socks were pushed off to the side, and then there were the boxers. They came off soundlessly, almost floating to the floor whimsically. And then the examination began.

Missouri started off by photographing him from head to toe, the flashing of the camera making Dean twitch. The clicks were hypnotic and jarring at the same time, and he wondered if he could even stand this long without passing out.

Next, after being photographed, Dean was examined physically, every injury documented and observed, with a few questions of previous injuries that had healed over and the specific nature of how he got them. That part was the hardest, in his opinion thus far; being forced to relive the injuries over and over as Missouri’s pen clicked away.

He wasn’t sure how long it took for every injury to be recorded, but suddenly, he was quite aware of the lack of camera clicking, and he felt a momentary confusion until Missouri spoke again.

“Now, this part’s a little awkward, Dean. I have to physically touch you and collect samples. This is actually necessary, but I understand if you need some time to collect yourself, or if during the examination, you want to take a break. I know how hard it is for someone to go through this and not come out of it scarred.”

“I know what you mean.” Dean said, and the nurse took the following silence as a go-ahead.

The whole of the collecting of samples took a while, mainly because Missouri had to go over every inch of his body to search for traces of John that shouldn’t belong there, like semen samples and body hair and skin under the fingernails, which Dean was surprised to find that he actually had some, which both disgusted and relieved him. More evidence meant the sooner he could escape this hell,but it also reminded him of what he had endured.

As she collected the evidence and sealed them into plastic bags, Dean struggled to forget the incident which had occurred only an hour or so before.

He tried not to flinch at the nurse’s gentle but clinical touch, tried not to shake too hard, tried not to cry. It was a constant battle, having someone look at you and see all the scars like pen strokes on a piece of paper was shameful. It was weird, how ashamed Dean was of the scars he wore; while he acknowledged that they had come from something he couldn’t control, couldn’t escape from (until now), he felt guilty that they were there, as if it was his fault that his father abused him, that he had done something wrong to invite the abuse on him.

Dean knew more than anyone what self-loathing was; he had so much hatred of himself and his weakness and inability to stand up and take control of his life, that he was barely human anymore, in his opinion. Sure, being with Cas had certainly helped quell that ravenous beast, but now, after tonight, he wasn’t sure if he could hold on.

As she proceeded through the examination, Missouri asked him banal questions, things that were so normal they seemed absurd in the context of the night. They were based around what friends he had, what he liked to do, did he have a girlfriend (or boyfriend, she quickly corrected), and what he wanted to be when he was older and out of high school.

Dean answered the best he could, and he admired her for distracting him from the larger picture. The smaller things were so much more comforting than he anticipated, and as the physical examination came to a close, he was much closer to the boundary between slightly anxious and somewhat calm again.

Baggin up the last piece of evidence, which Dean stoutly refused to look at, Missouri gave him a pair of blue sweatpants and a white T-shirt, adorned with the hospital’s logo. After he changed into more comfortable clothing, Dean stood on the sheet of paper as the nurse procured a clipboard out with paper on it. From his line of sight, it looked like a medical history sheet, with some of the information already put in.

“Don’t you have all my information?” Dean asked, voice slightly hoarse from not speaking.

“Yes, honey, because of that attempted suicide almost a half-year back. But,” she paused, concern and sympathy intermixing in her eyes like colored dyes, “I need your other history. The kind you don’t tell people about.”

The words rang solemnly in the empty air, sounding like the beginning of a funeral march. Altogether, the mood in the room, which had been almost nonexistent because of the clinical feel of the visit, darkened immediately, shadows seeming to climb ever higher to the ceiling, whispering long lost praise and spewing venomous compliments. The shadows morphed until Dean was absolutely sure that they were his father, that this was all a good dream and that he was waking up and he would be standing there and he would tear off his clothes and defile him again and again and--

They were gone. The shadows had shrunk back to their original shapes, sinister intentions ebbing away like smoke on water, and Dean was acutely aware of the new tears at the corner of his eyes. Angrily, he wiped them away, fighting the urge to belittle himself for the admission of guilt and weakness that tears had been made to be. The part that idolized his father, the inner boy soldier that had trooped onward through his life, face unwavering and never faltering, yelled and screamed that he was weak, that this was his problem, not some nurses. It belittled him, hit him, accused him of being a pussy, being too submissive to take it like a man.

But the other part, the bottled up emotions and the logic he had always run away from persisted, and for the first time in ever, it overwhelmed the phantom his father had created, and Dean was new. He felt new, anyway, as if he had woken up from a long sleep or rose up from the bottom of a dark lake.

He didn’t know he had started speaking until he became aware of Missouri’s pen scritch-scratching against the paper studiously. Shamefully, Dean stopped, because he had truthfully not known what he had said, or where he had stopped. Missouri, taking this silence as hesitation, looked up with a sad smile and said, “You were telling me about your mother, dear.”

Nodding numbly, Dean looked down at his clasped hands and continued speaking.

“My mom was…. the greatest person in my life. She loved me a lot, kept me happy, made sure I was always feeling loved.” Dean stopped, smiling sadly at the memory of her, her blue eyes sparkling in his memory like sapphires.

“She, uh, got pregnant with Sammy - my brother- when I was around 3, and when I was four, he was born. It was all supposed to go to plan, routine pregnancy shit. But apparently, before he was born, my mother had been having headaches and just spasms where she wasn’t all there. But when Sammy was born, something in her brain just popped.

“It was an aneurysm, or so the doctor said. She hadn’t visited anyone before then, never complained. It was just something she had experienced and I had noticed. But my dad, he was really really really in love with her, wouldn’t do anything to hurt her or anything. He was devastated by it, her death. It was the first time he wasn’t happy.”

Dean stopped, taking a few shaky breaths before clearing his throat and continuing, Missouri nodding supportively across the room.

“After that, life continued. Sammy and I grew up, and as we did, my dad got worse and worse. He wasn’t physically sick or crippled or anything. It was just that he was not all the same in his head, y’know? He started leaving us home more and more, for longer and longer periods of time. He would come back swaying and stumbling, but he would never do anything. I eventually got used to the smell of alcohol and junk.

“Eventually though, when I was around 9 and Sammy 5, dad started calling me names when he was awake or even home. It wasn’t anything too awful, not yet, just ‘stupid’ or ‘idiot’ and sometimes even ‘shit’, when he was drunk enough. I didn’t think anything of it, having learned by this point that talking when not spoken to was not a good thing to do. It ended with…. soreness in one way or another. It wasn’t until later, when I was maybe 12 that he started hitting me.”

Dean hiccuped a few times, the feeling of unshed tears and knotted throat constricting his speech and making him shudder. Missouri sat patiently, tears in her eyes as well, the same ones as his. It was almost as if she lived through the same life he had.

When he could speak again without his voice trembling, Dean continued softly.

“Dad used to be in the Marines, so he had some force behind his kicks and punches. He’s wicked fast, and he still has a knife-sharp mind, when he’s sober enough to think straight.” He huffed a bitter laugh.

“He always knew where to hit me and exactly how hard so that there was only a bruise and some soreness, no real broken bones or things that would stick out. They were all able to be hidden, sometimes with only a little bit of concealer I stole from a supermarket a while ago. And it didn’t matter where: on my chest, arms, back, legs, feet-- anywhere was fair game, as long as he couldn’t be suspected of anything.”

Dean was breathing hard now, the tears beginning to mount their silent attack on his composure. He was shaking, barely keeping himself together, and for a moment, he regretted ever coming here and doing this. Missouri reached out and patted his arm, and softly said, “If this is too much for----”

“NO!” Dean yelled, interjecting. He had had enough of this hell, this torture for an entire lifetime, and he would be damned if he couldn’t just get it all out of his system before he threw himself in front of a train.

“He kept calling me names and stuff the entire time, names like ‘faggot’ and ‘sissy’. Those came when he found out I liked boys and girls, not just one or the other like he wanted. Sammy wouldn’t say anything, because if there was one goddamn thing that John Winchester made us learn, it was obedience. And we were not to say one word against him or else--”

Dean stopped, panting as if he had run a mile with no shoes, the tears momentarily absent. Now, all he was was numb. Every single incident, etched with utter perfection into his mind, rang around like the sounds of mourning bells, hitting him from seemingly every angle. His father’s face leered at him from the corner, screams of pain echoing from his left, and then there were the sensations. His skin was crawling s if there was something behind him, breathing down his neck, and whispering the name “Maaaaaarrrryyyyyy” in a perverted kind of sensuality.

And then it all quieted, every noise vanishing until the silence of the room was devastatingly loud. He could hear the beating of his heart thumping against his ribs like someone was taking a hammer and smashing it into his chest over and over. His skin was clammy, his hands were clenched so painfully at his sides, a little stream of blood drippin monotonously onto the paper sheet.

Drip,

drip,

drip.

The words slipped out so easily and so quietly that Dean wasn’t even sure he had truly spoken them.

“My father started raping me about when I was 14. And from then on, he hasn’t stopped.”

He didn’t talk for a while, not after all of what had transpired, and Missouri blessedly, didn’t try to push him to do so. She knew better than anyone that some things need time, and that for rape victims, even if they knew it had going on too long, it was just too soon to continue reliving that life in their heads. God knows those memories never stop, never cease to exist. They may become fuzzy over time, like decaying photographs, but they can never be erased, and for some, are always in clear focus.

Ten minutes passed before Dean spoke again.

“It’s always done at night, something that I never cared about really. It happened no matter the day, no matter the circumstance, so I never paid attention to it. But now….”

Dean trailed off, looking into some imaginary distance before shaking himself back to reality.

“It was always the same thing: he would drag me from the living room, because that’s where I do my homework and hang out when nothing else is happening, and every time, I try to fight back. Tonight, I tried harder than before, but it didn’t work because my dad simply just threw me to the ground and  kicked me a few times, once in the head to confuse me before throwing me over his shoulder and shutting the door. Every time this happens, Sammy runs to his room and he peers out of the crack, and that’s the one thing I see every night before he- he rapes me.

“He throws me down on the bed, and you know what happens next.” Dean gestured to the medical sheet, no doubt full of any recordings of his bruised and torn up rear. He wouldn’t be surprised to see that information on it, and he wouldn’t doubt how serious it is.

“And then I black out from the pain or the shame and then I’m in my room, and me and Sammy just cry together. Every night, for more than 3 years, I’ve felt like I’ve been dying from the inside out, a decaying soul dragging down a body with it, and then…”

Dean smiled a genuine smile, the only one Missouri had ever seen on his face during this entire examination, and she knew then that this man had to be put away for a long time. John Winchester had tried to rob his eldest son of all that he had wanted, tried to make sure every damn speck of his soul was as blackened and damned as his, and here was the proof that he had failed, that his attempts were almost successfully, but had fallen short.

“... there was Cas.”

There was nothing more to be said from either party: Missouri’s mind was too full of bitter anger and self-righteous fury that she could barely keep it together after she asked Dean to wait patiently as she went to get his lawyer and brother, as well as call the police. They had enough evidence from that poor boy’s body to incriminate John alone on abuse charges; his testimony was even more damning. There was little that she thought the bastard could do to defend himself against it.

An hour or so later, Missouri was at the front desk when a man came in, haggard and looking rather desperate. He had kind, concerned eyes and a weather-beaten face, and on his head, he wore a trucker hat that read ‘Singer’s Salvage Yard’.

“Can I help you?” She asked politely, but steely. She had no way of knowing who this man was, she had never seen him before. That lent the possibility of this being John Winchester, and she was in no mood to offer him anything other than a punch to the guy and a nice pair of handcuffs.

“I’m lookin’ for Dean Winchester--”

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid that the only person who can visit him now is his little brother Sammy, considering when the police find you, you’ll have lost all visitation rights and---”

“EXCUSE ME?!”

The man was beginning to get angry and confused, and Missouri saw no small amount of regret in his eyes, very different from the regret that abusers faked to get an appeal; no, this man was truly sorry for something, and the back of her mind nagged her to ask this man’s name.

“I’m sorry, but who are you?”

“Robert Singer, and if you were under the impression that I would do anything to hurt those boys, then you were sorely mistaken, ma’am. I’m their godfather, whether or not that means anything to you, but it means a helluva lot to me. I was supposed to care for those boys when things went wrong, and I am already beatin’ myself up because I didn’t have the courage to step up when I knew something was wrong, so please let me see him. He’s like the son I wish I had.” He added at the end, never once taking his eyes away from hers.

Missouri had to say that this was an honest mistake, and rightfully told him so. As to the godfather situation, he was allowed in to see Dean, to which he gruffly but gratefully thanked her before turning around and motioning a boy forward.

It had to be Dean’s brother, Sam, and Missouri’s heart clenched painfully at how haunted those eyes looked. He was 13 years old, and he had the eyes of a veteran, a man who had some some terrifying and horrible things at too young of an age. He was thin, bony to Missouri due to suspected malnutrition, and he was growing like a weed, at least an inch taller than his brother, who was 4 years older than him.

“Your brothers in the room on the right, three doors down.” Missouri said kindly, “Be careful, though: he’s just been through a two-hour long rape kit examination--”

Bobby whispered “Oh God.”

“-- so don’t ask him anything close to the subject of his father. Just be there and support him, hold him, anything that could make him feel better. If he chooses to file charges, which I assume he will be doing, this will be an even longer process, and it will be difficult for him to recover while he is essentially reliving the abuse during the trial.”

 **  
**Missouri took a deep breath, and said, “He’s going to be okay, Sam. And so are you.” She gave the boy a soothing smile, and received a small one in return. Nodding gruffly to the nurse, Bobby Singer walked past her and just as he left the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a tear or two rolling down his cheek.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, lovelies!
> 
> I'm very sorry to have kept you waiting for so long for this chapter, but I had trouble getting into the swing of writing again and school decided to bog me down for a few weeks. But fear not! The chapter is up, and the writing fire has been rekindled.
> 
> Warning: use of the word 'faggot' ahead, and mentions of conversion therapy. FYI, the means of conversion therapy I used (in conversation, I assure you nothing was done to Cas!) are outdated, but I did research the presence of it in Kansas, and though it isn't explicitly banned, I am sure that it's not looked upon favorably in most districts.
> 
> Also, I've had a commenter recently tell me that my story is scientifically and psychologically inaccurate, and that they could not finish it because of that. If you feel the same, then suck it. I did not write this to be entirely accurate in any sense, but further things like the legal process in upcoming chapters will be accurate. Otherwise, I wrote this to have fun and entertain people, not cater to psychology majors in college who can't simply enjoy a story.
> 
> Anywho, here it is! Fair warning, not a lot of dialogue. This is kind of a filler chapter, but I think it holds some merit!

The usually comforting atmosphere of Bobby’s house was almost oppressive, the dusty air bearing down on Dean like a lead-lined blanket, as if he lacked the strength to lift it. He felt like he was suffocating one second at a time, that everything was just seconds away from falling out from underneath him, and his world would just implode.

The stress was no small thing either: it was one thing to be nervous about speaking in front of students. It was clearly another to speak about the grisly and traumatic details of his 3-year descent into hell in front of an entire jury of adults who knew nothing about him, as well as being in the same room as the man who was torment to his tortured soul.

After giving all the information he could to Missouri, he had sat in silence for a moment until the door had unceremoniously been thrown open and he had almost been bowled over by a blur of shaggy brown hair and tear-stained cheeks. Sam and Dean hugged for a long time, sobs shaking both boys’ bodies, and through his veil of tears, Dean saw Bobby in the doorway, not crying but close enough to it. He looked hesitant to walk in, as if he had been the one to cause this, and as Dean pulled away from Sam to reach for him, Bobby looked down at the floor guiltily.

He couldn’t hear him, but Dean could see him muttering darkly and sadly under his breath, and he ignored it as he got up and walked over to the older man, who had begun to shake with the weight of his sadness. Without a word, he grasped him in a hug, and he listened to Bobby’s heart.

“I could’ve stopped it.” Bobby muttered, barely audible even in the silent room. “If I had more time, if I had been more proactive, if I had known sooner, if I’d have--”

Dean shushed him quietly, and they stood there, the older man muttering over and over and over and Dean making soothing noises at him. The irony of the situation was clear to him, but Dean pushed it aside in favor of comforting the man he would’ve rather wanted to be his father.

“None of this was your fault, Bobby.” he said softly. “There was nothing you did that made this worse. Having your suspicions about it- don’t argue, I know you did- didn’t hurt me more, didn’t make me suffer more than I already have, and you are not guilty. You didn’t do this to me, John did.”

And so they had stayed before the police came and Dean had to recount the entirety of the story in almost grisly detail. Surprisingly, he was like a robot when he recounted the times he had been abused. It was as if he was sort of detached from the whole thing, that the knowledge that this might very well be the last time he would ever have to endure something so horrible was clearing his mind, pushing away emotion for the time being. It almost dehumanized the situation, so much so that when he was done and was being shepherded out to Bobby’s Chevelle, Dean didn’t really feel anything except an extraordinary feeling of exhaustion. He knew he should’ve felt guilty or even sad, but instead, all he wanted was to go to sleep.

He said as much to Bobby and Sam, and they simply looked on sadly as Dean trooped up the stairs. He would have to speak to them eventually about it, about the no doubt upcoming trial because there was no way in hell that John Winchester would be allowed to exist in this reality without being in a prison cell. That much Dean was incredibly adamant about.

He fell asleep almost immediately, as soon as he hit the pillow, and he slept for a solid eleven hours, during which he was free of the nightmares that plagued his mind regularly.

The next morning was anything but idyllic, beginning with a bout of nightmares that had Dean waking up screaming, and the awkward and tense silence that practically enveloped all three occupants of the house like the plague. None of them liked it, the silence, but what was there to say?

They all just puttered around the house, trying to distract themselves with anything that seemed fit. Bobby, after a while, retired to the junkyard to work on a few cars for fun, but there were noises of crashing metal and grunts of rage and irritation that warned both Sam and Dean that it was better to just let him have his time, get the anger and guilt out of his system.

The boys, however, just numbly fell back into the routine of doing homework. Despite the fact it was only a Tuesday and they should’ve been in school, the magnitude of the situation hit the school board in the face, and they generously and sympathetically allowed both boys to have time off from school, at least until they could ‘settle back into normalcy’. They spoke of it as if it was easy, a manageable goal that could be completed and all the loose ends tied up like the bow on a Christmas present. They didn’t understand how this abuse festered in both boys’ minds like a cancer, digging deep and refusing to let go. In time, of course, the pain would lessen, but it would never fully disappear. Scars would always remind them of the pain they endured, and the ones that no one could see were worse.

The day that Dean gave his statement to the police, a few weeks ago, John Winchester was arrested trying to cross the Kansas- Missouri border, and was brought back to Lawrence to stand trial. The police had been kind in their arrest of him, but no one really needed to explain the sudden appearance of bruises and maybe a black eye.

The news had quickly spread throughout the town as well. Even though the boys practically secluded themselves away from the public eye, even in a town like Lawrence, there were always the vultures. Reporters from the Lawrence Gazette tried to get a scoop from Bobby when he went out to the store to get some groceries, both boys allowed to stay home. If the cashier hadn’t intervened, Bobby probably would’ve beaten the man senseless, a seedy guy with a pudgy midsection and curly grayish-black hair who ran a column that was akin to the tabloids.

It was called _Word of Metatron_ , as if the man himself, Marvin Angelo, was the scribe of God. Those who read it weekly considered it as such, but for the most part, it was either a guilty pleasure or ignored completely. No one really wanted to read any of his stuff, given it was all ridiculous and horribly written. He had a reputation as well of being a disgustingly driven man, to the point where he had been caught at a cemetery a few miles away to take pictures of a corpse of a freshly murdered girl three years back.

Despite all of it, Marvin was still allowed to write the trash he called news, and he took it upon himself to get that story whether or not it was even remotely okay.

Castiel, despite his closeness to Dean, was completely caught off-guard by the news, and was more than a little hurt. He should’ve been told directly by Dean, he shouldn’t have been told from someone’s third-hand account from some nurse who assumed she knew what she was talking about.

He tried to contact Dean, but his phone was off, and attempts to talk to him in person were practically impossible. Bobby refused to let him inside, on the account that Dean needed time to get ready and prepare himself for the trial ahead. And whenever Cas even saw Dean, it was always a fleeting glance of his face in the upper story windows of the Singer residence. Just a flash of curtains and nothing more.

So Cas stepped back, deciding to let Dean come to him when he was ready. He prepared himself for that eventual confrontation, and he went over and over in his head what he could say or do to make Dean feel better, to make him know that none of this was his fault, that he would be there for him and would always give him attention and time should he need it. He prepared himself for the possibility that their relationship, whatever it was, could end abruptly and suddenly, without warning and without ceremony. It hurt Cas to think this way, to actually hold to be true that kind of end to something that he enjoyed immensely, that he had agonized over to such a degree that it was often second nature. Holding hands, kissing, cuddling close together, those things would be sorely missed, almost more now that he knew how much they meant to him.

Cas was not prepared for a letter to arrive in the mail a few days after the arrest of John Winchester that was stamped by the Kansas Judicial Department.

It was sitting on the breakfast table one morning, accompanied by an very angry Michael Novak. Anna and Gabriel were also in the kitchen, and both of them had stony looks on their faces, no doubt from having to deal with Michael at 8:30 in the morning.

“What is this, Castiel?” Michael hissed, pointing angrily at the letter on the table.

Cautiously walking forward, Cas picked up the envelope, clearly seeing ‘Kansas Judicial Department’ typed on it in the upper left corner. He looked at Michael hesitantly, who gestured even more angrily at the envelope, and he proceeded to open it.

Inside was one single sheet of typed paper, with the address information for the courthouse a few miles away from which the subpoena was sent. Cas could tell it was a subpoena, given it was stamped in the middle of the goddamn paper in bolded font.

Cas gulped nervously.

Subpoenas were meant for one thing, and one thing only: ordering a witness to appear in court to either give physical evidence or eyewitness testimony to the prosecution and defense. Castiel Novak was being summoned to court to preside as a witness to help convict John Winchester of child abuse.

The silence was deafening in his ears.

“Castiel. Is there a _specific_ reason the Kansas Judicial Department wants you, of all people, to serve as a witness in a court of law? Any one at all?”

He did not speak.

Michael’s face grew even more red, approaching the point where it would soon transition into a dark purple if no one alleviated his fury. He was barely holding it together, Cas could see it plain as day. Any stress that had accumulated under his brother’s skin was quickly turning into fuel for his rage, and even his ordinarily steely nerves were fraying at the edges, trying to hold it in.

Cas did not dare move; he did not want to get splattered against the wall like a pancake any time soon.

“ANSWER ME, CASTIEL!”

The shout was loud enough to make all of them flinch, and Michael took a step closer to Castiel, any sense of calm disappearing under the tsunami of pure anger.

“Listen, Mikey--” Gabriel started, hands already in a placating gesture, but Michael cut him off with a glare so profoundly terrifying that even Gabriel’s normal complexion paled significantly to resemble soured milk.

Cas opened his mouth to speak, but the moment the glare turned back to him, no words would leave his mouth.

Without warning, Michael darted forward and grabbed Cas by his shirt, roughly dragging him close to him as he hissed, “I’ll only ask one more time, Castiel, or something far worse could happen.” Cas could smell the alcohol on his breath, and dully, he thought, _Well, that solves the problem of the missing bottles in the liquor cabinet._

With a growl of rage, Michael slammed Castiel into one of the chairs before getting in his face and very calmly, but angrily said, “How are you affiliated in any way with that Dean boy that the court system would think you as a viable witness for a child abuse trial? Hmmm? In what way have you become privy to that kind of information?”

Cas couldn’t say a word.

“How many times have you been in his hospital room, Castiel? And after that, what have you been doing, hanging out with him so often? What do you boys get up to when no one’s watching? If I were to guess, I would almost say that you two are---”

He abruptly stopped in his train of thought, eyes frozen on some unseeable thing. Cas could see the cogs in his mind whirring and clicking, watched as his brother started putting the pieces together, and watched as the overall look of horror crossed his face as it all came into the light. Michael stepped back, mouth open as if to catch mosquitos in it, and if he wasn’t about to die of shock and fear, Cas might’ve laughed. The color had vanished from his face, and he was as pale as snow.

“....You. And. Him.” He whispered, almost inaudible. “You two….. are… are….”

No one spoke for a few moments, and Cas could see as clear as day his oldest brother spiralling downward, all the stress and emotion racing towards one end that was never going to be close to happy. Every single possibility of what exactly it meant that Cas and Dean were even together raced through his mind, each one tinted with disdain and utter disbelief.

Michael Novak had tried his damndest to not stray from the true Christian path, and he had tried just as hard to ensure that his younger siblings, who he was practically entrusted with the mission to lead, as they could not lead themselves, didn’t fall into the depths of sin. He had liked to think before today, that he had had succeeded in his mission in the absence of his father and mother.

The passing of the Novak patriarch had been devastating to all of them, the most pain being felt by Michael. Being so close to their father, he had been the most affected by his death, and every word he had said up until his death became Michael’s gospel. The last thing that Michael’s father had said before his death was the one thing he always championed as the cause of his resurging faith.

He was not one to deny the facts: as a medical professional, logic and facts were the skeleton keys to the locks of healing. Even if it seemed odd that such a devout Christian could be a doctor and not have qualms about the presence of the Almighty, Michael always managed to keep those lives separate, or as separate as he could. Even he was not impervious to the urge to pray before and after surgery, and he still sometimes attributed successes in the operating room to the guiding of God’s hands.

And that was something he cherished: the thought that God was a loving, caring and benevolent being. It didn’t matter if the man or woman, youthful or elder, died on his table; it was always God’s plan for them. Michael had long established that sometimes, the Lord makes the difficult decision in each patient’s life, and that sometimes, they don’t survive, no matter how hard he tried.

He had made peace with that in medical school, a long time ago. But here was the evidence now, the crucial and infallible evidence that perhaps God had made a mistake.

His little brother, the one who needed the most guidance in life, who was not yet ready to live on his own and make those terrible decisions, was a homosexual.

_Surely this is a mistake!_ he thought, disbelief coursing through his veins like cold ice water. _There is no way that the Lord I have entrusted my faith to could ever make one of his own something so infused with sin!_

Michael could not believe it, and could not accept it.

In medical school, there had been a unit on Psychology he had to take, something he had struggled through because of all of the disparities between God’s word and the word of science. One particular topic had brought him to his knees: the belief that sexual orientation was not, in fact, a choice but a perfectly normal occurrence in every population in the world. It was unchangeable, and Michael scorned the fact with all of his being.

Surely, if behavior could be changed, then why not sexuality?

He had stumbled across such possibilities in regards to behavior modification therapies, and upon his discovery of aversion therapy and conversion therapy used to treat those with ‘confused sexual predilections’, had outright refused to believe that sexual orientation could not be a choice. It was a choice, though not made by human minds: Satan had a hold in this, having wormed his way into the minds of unsuspecting children, and had planted that damnable seed in their minds that perhaps they were in love with others of their sex.

Of course, such opinions were not popular in the medical field, due to the scorning of unethical treatments and harmful after-effects that damaged the human psyche, so Michael had kept it very hidden in the back of his mind.

And now, here it was, the only solution to the problem at hand.

“I can fix you, Castiel.” Michael whispered, shocked at first, but then smiling as if he had won the lottery. He grabbed Castiel again, leaning so close as to almost touch him, and whispered again, much more urgent, “I can _FIX_ you!”

“Michael, whatever you’re thinking---” Anna began, fire beginning to shine out of her eyes, but Michael cut her off.

“Now, Anna, what we have here is Satan’s hold on Castiel. He is not himself, and you know that! I have seen the signs, with that abandoned cross and the flinching at Christ’s name- I assure you, I have seen it!- and that obsession with that faggot boy Balthazar, who paid the price for sin with his life! Castiel is not right, and I have the tools to fix him!”

Michael let Cas go very suddenly, and he fell back against the chair, eyes wide and mouth open in shock. _He’s gone insane!_ , he thought wildly as he watched Michael pace back and forth, the manic look in his eyes as they darted back and forth, deliberating some solution.

“Aversion therapies are hard to come by, nowadays, and with such public outcry, I wouldn’t be able to survive that trial unscathed. This will have to be on the down-low, for mine and Castiel’s sake.”

He continued speaking, as though everything he was saying was fact and not some warped process of a mind denying the chance to be accepting of an unchangeable fact.

“Yes, we might have to do it in the hospital, somewhere private where those lecherous nurses won’t suspect a thing. We’ll need some help, from someone who won’t care what happens-- Alastair, maybe. He’s good at not telling secrets. We’ll also need some stimuli to get him aroused, and nausea-inducing chemicals to wean him off of his perversion---”

Without warning, Gabriel Novak, who had never been so angry in his entire life, walked up to Michael rather quickly and punched him in the face. It was a quick punch, too, but they all heard the impact and Cas thought that he heard a dull crunch as his eldest brother reeled back, holding his face in shock.

Not even so much as blinking, Gabriel drove another fist into his gut before driving another one into Michael’s nose, eliciting a guttural moan as the bones in his nose broke with an audible crack. They could see the miniscule drops of blood drop onto the floor and small streams of it ran over their brother’s fingers as he covered his nose.

Michael sat back against the wall, holding his broken nose and staring in wide-eyed shock at Gabriel, who sat on the balls of his feet and leaned very close to him, eyes unflinching and hard as steel.

“Listen, here, you big bag of dicks.” he said, low and threatening. “You touch one hair on Cas’s head, I will released everything I’ve recorded on my phone to the police, who will charge you with malpractice, abuse, and the use of a therapy treatment that is unethical and looked down upon by medical professionals in the state of Kansas.”

He waved his iPhone in his hand, which was blinking red, a sign that Gabriel was indeed recording everything said in the last ten or so minutes.

“Above all, since I know the hospital is very important to you, your reputation as a doctor will be ruined, and you will be fired from your job and prosecuted to the full extent of the law if you continue through on this plan of yours.”

Anna spoke up then, easing Cas up and out of the chair, her voice as hard as stone. “We are taking Cas to somewhere else where he can live without a disgusting, Bible driven psychopath like you can find him. If you try anything else, if you try to step within one foot of Cas, then you better watch your back. Neither Gabriel nor I have any inclination to avoid beating the shit out of you.”

Anna whisked Cas upstairs, instructing him to pack a duffel bag of stuff he needed like his toothbrush and clothes and any items he would just like to have. Cas followed her instruction without any response, numbness filling him to the core.

He was very happy to have siblings like Gabriel and Anna to back him up, but the thought of Michael sending him to some conversion therapy camp or (even worse) attempting it himself was a terrifying thought, even more so than the depression and the sickness that would have plagued him if they hadn’t stepped in.

He packed numbly and quickly, only sparing a moment to look at the cross on his wall before crossing over to it and taking it in his hands.

Cas wanted to break it, snap it into pieces and throw them in a fire, but something that stays with you for a long time simply can’t disappear, even if you break it. It was such a large presence in his life that he doubted he would feel better if he destroyed it. He stared at it sadly, eyes roving over the etched wooden features of the crucified Jesus Christ, stared into the eyes that seemed to follow him as a child.

Sighing, he put it into the top drawer of his now empty dresser before turning to Anna and nodding silently. Smiling sadly, Anna put an arm around his shoulder and escorted him down the stairs.

As they walked, Cas looked over everything he passed, all stuck in the shades of white and grey had had once associated with the feeling of home. Now, they were all cruel and faceless, sparing no sympathy for the boy who was leaving them, and they seemed to look on him with disappointment as he passed.

Michael was still in the kitchen when they rejoined Gabriel, and it seemed to Cas that some of his bruises had multiplied since they went upstairs, but he lacked the energy to care anymore. This morning had sucked all of the energy out of him like a leech, and all Cas wanted to do was go to Dean and cuddle up next to him and sleep the day away.

Two damaged boys seeking solace in the other.

They all walked out to the car, keys in Anna’s hand. Cas had picked up the subpoena as they left, not wanting to pass up the chance to forget it, and he put his duffel in the trunk of his car. Anna elected to drive, and Gabriel got in the passenger seat, letting Cas have the entirety of the back to himself, something he appreciated from his siblings.

The drive was short and quiet, no one really needing to say the words that all of them knew should be said. None of them had any idea what to do now that their only sibling who had the means to take care of them was pushing for the idea of conversion therapy on an already hurt boy and preaching homophobia. Gabriel and Cas still had to finish high school, and Anna was almost done with college, but she didn’t have a job.

 **  
**The future was full of uncertainty for the Novaks, something they keenly felt as they pulled up to the house of Bobby Singer.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for being late! I have had a crap ton of work to do, with the play and both choruses I am in, and all the stuff for theater and AP classes, but now I am back! I also had a bit of writer's block, but that seems to be over with.... for now.
> 
> I would also like to apologize profusely for what I said a few chapters ago, maybe the one before this one. In the face of receiving constructive criticism (something I should've heeded), I instead acted like a bitch. I did. I made someone probably feel like crap because they offered up some advice on technical and scientific inaccuracies that my story has. Instead of being supportive and thanking them for being so attentive and helpful, I shamed them publicly on the next chapter I wrote, and slandered them. I was a complete and utter idiot for what I said, and there was no need to be so rude and inconsiderate in the face of what I could have done. So, I would like to say I'm super sorry for what I have done, and though I can't find the person who made the comment in the first place, as their account seems to have been deleted, I am offering up an apology to all of you as well, because I wronged you too.
> 
> Anyways, here's the next chater, which is kinda filler-y but kinda cute at the same time! Enjoy!

The resulting few weeks had been awkward, to say the least, and full of tension.

 

The Novaks’ arrival at the Singer household caused quite a stir, as neither Dean nor Sam were expecting them in the least. Dean wasn’t sure on how his and Cas’s relationship would go, considering he- and everyone else knew- was now in the public spotlight because of his abuse. As far as he was concerned, their relationship had been in some sort of limbo, a twilight zone of uncertainty and confusion.

 

Yet, there had been no doubt in his mind when Cas saw him in the foyer that they were not giving this up. It was partially because he had practically tackled him in the hallway, body shaking with inaudible sobs, and partially because even in the maelstrom of utter terror in his head, Cas’s warmth and life brought Dean back out of himself, made him whole.

 

He had taken Cas upstairs to his room, leaving Bobby, Sam, Gabriel, and Anna to explain the whole deal and help unpack.

 

Castiel was too tired at this point to truly register anything, but he still managed to not collapse against Dean (though, that wasn’t a terrible alternative to stumbling up the stairs like a drunk) and recognize enough of his environment as they climbed the creaky, yet sturdy oak stairs. The walls were old, but they held a strength to them, as if the house had been lived in extensively, but with so few people that the wearing of the wood was minimal.

 

They came up on a landing with doors on both sides of the hallways leading to a large room that Cas numbly presumed was Bobby’s room. They walk-stumbled, Cas’s exhausted feet dragging behind him, and through the fatigue that made his mind hazy, he could sense Dean’s discomfort.

 

He’s been abused, his logical mind whispered. Be careful with him.

 

But the overpowering urge to sleep, all energy having been sapped from the conflict of only an hour ago, maybe less.

 

Before he could think, he heard a door opening, smelled the scent of leather and mint and then he felt something amazing. His cheek and the side of his head was supported by fuzzy and warm blobs, and he sighed with contentment before his vision tunneled into blissful black.

 

*~*~*

 

When he woke up, Cas was struck with a strong sense of wrongness, of being somewhere he didn’t know. The fear spiked as he looked around rapidly, not moving an inch from his reclining position on someone else’s bed. His eyes caught posters of rock bands, a few clean wrenches and screws, a faded red toolbox, a closet full of flannel shirts, dark t-shirts and a leather jacket hanging from the knob on the door.

 

It was then than he felt the warm band of warmth around his midsection, and he looked down to see that he was encircled by an arm, speckled with freckles that were the color of light chocolate. The hand attached to the arm was settled nicely against the curve of his waist near the mattress, and Cas turned his head to follow the arm.

 

He shifted slightly, and there was a slight grumbling and movement from behind him, and a puff of breath against his neck. Moving even slower than before, like almost microscopically slow, Cas craned his head and turned to see who it was.

 

Dean looked like an angel when he slept.

 

It was less of a statement of love and affection than one of fact, because Castiel had not once, not ever seen his boyfriend asleep. It was something that hadn’t bothered him in the slightest (in what possible universe would Castiel James Novak be caught sleeping with another person before he had even been on a real date with him/her), but now that he was in such a position, it sort of bothered him.

 

With his eyes closed and a small, content smile on his face, Dean Winchester looked as though there was nothing in the world that could scar him, break him, maim him. He was caught in time, a moment of pure, unfettered bliss. And, of course, there was a single ray of sunlight that poked through the blinds, managing to alight itself directly on his boyfriend’s face, illuminating every freckle on his nose just perfectly.

 

It was so much like a fairy tale, where the true love of one’s life is clearly seen, displayed in all of its beauty and power. But those fairy tale princes that Castiel had grown up admiring and loving as if they were real were charlatans and facsimiles to what he saw in front of him. That was why he hated fairy tales: the true love was always fake, only beautiful, and never truly there. Media often did that to young love, capitalizing on the pretty faces and gorgeous bodies that they seemed unattainable, but desirable. It was like trying to catch smoke.

 

And some couples he had seen in school had acted like that, all lovey-dovey and devoted to each other, but Cas knew what love looked like, and it wasn’t what teenagers displayed. No, to display true affection for someone was either weak or cheesy, things that should be avoided or be embarrassed about rather than appreciated.

 

Dean took that sentiment and broke it into pieces without even lifting a finger.

 

Sure, he was beautiful to look at. His jawline and his eyes were captivating, and Castiel knew he could spend hours mapping his freckles, making constellations out of dots of pigment. But he was also strong, and smart, and funny, and aggravating, and sometimes infuriating, and altogether ridiculous (in a dorky way). He was not just ‘a pretty face’; no, he was a man, complex and beautiful and terrifying and loving and spiteful.

 

Castiel was in love with all of Dean Winchester.

 

“You know, staring at someone while they sleep is incredibly pervy.”

 

Cas chuckled softly, and continued staring into green eyes.

 

“I know that, D-Dean Winchester. I also know that you are incredibly attractive, and that has to c-c-count for something.”

 

Dean’s blush could fill an entire room with warmth, and Cas smiled as a jolt of pleasure exploding through him like a lightning bolt through the blackness of a storm-clouded sky.

 

“Why are you here, Cas? Not that I don’t want you here or anything- in fact, I really missed you and I hope that----”

 

Cas looked down, the smile frozen on his face. Whereas it had once been as radiant as sun through a stained glass window, now it was cracked and murky, like the surface of a frozen lake not entirely frozen. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to say anything about it, but then he realized how much Dean had made him happier, and how he had been trusted with everything that he had held dear, save for the abuse he suffered. But Castiel knew how horrible that must be, how shameful it could’ve been to reveal to anyone, much less someone he cared about more than some of his own family.

 

Even though he had decided to tell him, Cas’s voice was shaky with emotion.

 

“Mic-chael was drunk. He wanted to make me und-d-dergo c-conversion therapy.”

 

The words hung in the air like smoke, untouchable yet suffocating.

 

Dean’s face was a mix of rage and despair. It was a little refreshing to Cas, who was pretty sure that most people would either be supportive of the decision (considering the majority of their high school had decided to protest the formation of a GSA) or just give him looks of pity that were more reserved for starving circus animals than human beings.

 

“D-d-don’t worry, D-dean. G-gabriel punched him in the face a c-couple of times. Well, maybe more than a c-c-couple.” Cas added as an afterthought, to dissuade his boyfriend from letting his anger explode into violent fury.

 

Dean looked slightly pleased by the admission, and Cas continued as he settled back into Dean’s arms, reclining into his chest.

 

“So, we d-decided to g-get out of there and the first and only place we c-could g-g-g-go was here, to you.”

 

They were silent for a few minutes, just enjoying the dusty rays of late-afternoon sunlight piercing the room like blades of gold. The dust specks were suspended in the air like fairies that Dean never admitted he enjoyed reading about in the corners of the library. He like mythology and fantasy, almost obsessively. Back when Charlie had introduced him to the topic of LARPing, he was so goddamn excited because it encompassed the worlds of Tolkein, Rowling, and so many games he had wanted to play. But he had been worried around Cas, that showing such excitement would wierd the stuttering boy out and that he wouldn’t like him as much as he did.

 

He was so happy that those fears had been assuaged.

 

Finally, after what seemed like an hour of just laying on top of the bed, thinking pleasant thoughts and enjoying each other’s company, Cas wriggled out of Dean’s warm grip and stood up, stretching long and hard. His back popped and crackled, and he couldn’t help but make a satisfied noise deep in his throat.

 

He glanced back at Dean, who looked as if he was about to laugh, and Cas’s blushing face grew even hotter, as if he had stared straight into a fire.

 

“Enjoyed that, did we?” he said cheekily.

 

Cas chucked a pillow at him in response before saying, “So what if I d-d-did? I’m hungry, so I’m g-gonna g-g-go d-d-downstairs.”

 

At the mention of food, Dean practically leapt out of bed, shoving Cas aside lightly as he raced out the door, yelling “Catch me if you can, Novak!”

 

Cas took off like a shot after him, a smile on his face. Dean’s retreating form crossed below the stairs, and he barely slowed down as he tore down the creaky wooden steps as if he were flying. He could see his boyfriend’s feet flying into the hallway leading to the kitchen, and tore past the corner as if Hell was at his heels.

 

He caught up to Dean not long after, and after shoving him just as lightly into the wall, Cas ran, laughing like a maniac, into the kitchen, raising his arms above his head like he had just ripped the ribbon at the finish line of  marathon. A few seconds later, he heard Dean’s slightly panting breath, and with no moment’s notice, there was a chaste kiss on his cheek.

 

“That’s your prize for winning.” Dean whispered, and Cas felt a stirring in his chest, like a fluttering of wings, propelling cool and refreshing air into his lungs.

 

He watched as his boyfriend walked over to the fridge and opened it, perusing for a moment before making a dissatisfied noise.

 

“Bobby’s a little low on anything that isn’t a few days old, and I’m pretty sure this crappy salsa’s been expired for at least a week.” Dean said, making a disgusted face as he held up what looked like a container of off-red salsa, only it was much murkier than it should have been.

 

“Well, if someone hadn’t eaten everything up when I was out ferrying someone’s little brother around with his little friend, then maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

 

Both boys turned to see Bobby leaning against the doorway, looking both bemused and a little…. sad at the same time. He looked at them as if he was seeing someone else in their place, someone he had lost.

 

“Sammy’s got a little friend?” Dean asked, incredulous.

 

“Yeah, little girl named Jess. Now, don’t you go trying to set them up or anything like that; let what happens happen.” Bobby added, seeing the look of pure and utter mischief on Dean’s face, the kind of face an older brother makes when he knows he can be the biggest embarrassment to his little brother. Cas had never really felt that, because he was the youngest child, but he did remember that night back a while when the Novaks couldn’t stop laughing at Anna eating her salad seductively.

 

“Set who up?”

 

Gabriel sauntered into the kitchen, plopping down into a kitchen chair and planting his legs on the table, cherry lollipop in his mouth. With a small huff, Bobby reached over and swept both legs off of the table, and gave the golden-eyed Novak a hard look. Surprisingly, Gabriel simply nodded in respect and sat up a little straighter, the mischievous twinkle never leaving his eyes.

 

“Sam has a friend named Jess.” Cas said evenly. “And it’s none of our business as to when or if they d-d-decide to g-get together, right?”

 

Gabriel smirked at him, giving him a cheeky wink, and around the candy in his mouth, he said, “Hint received, Captain.”

 

“Thank you so much for allowing us to stay here, Mr. Singer” Anna said as she walked into the kitchen, having heard the conversation drifting through the halls. Her hair was sticking up all over the place from sleeping, as if she had just woken up from a nap, and her reading glasses were skewed. She rubbed her eyes sleepily, and sluggishly rearranged her glasses. Dean, Cas, and Gabriel were holding back laughter until she looked them square in the eye, and with the Novak squint and head-tilt, asked, “What?”

 

The laughter bubbled out of them in a rush, and between moments when his eyes were closed, Cas could see Gabriel huddled over the table, banging his fist, and Dean curled up on the floor, tears streaming down his face.

 

“What?!” Anna said, louder this time, and she looked down at herself, worried she wasn’t wearing pants or something embarrassing.

 

Without a word, Bobby handed her a mirror that was laying on the counter, and they laughed even harder when her eyes widened almost comically.

 

Between gasps of laughter, Dean choked out, “There’s something about Anna, guys.”

 

Dean and Gabriel laughed even harder, while Castiel looked at his boyfriend quizzically, not quite sure what he was saying.

 

“Of c-course there is something about Anna. Her hair is sticking up all over the place.” he said, even more confused.

 

“It’s a movie, Cas. You know, like that scene with Cameron Diaz and Ben Stiller and the--” Dean started, then stopped with a scandalized look. “You’ve never seen ‘There’s Something About Mary’?”

 

Cas shook his head, while Anna said, “We didn’t have a lot of time to watch movies, Dean.”

 

“Yeah, ‘coz our alcoholic, homophobic older brother who is a workaholic practically made sure we never put any time into being teenagers rather than academically gifted robots.” Gabriel said snarkily.

 

The laughter died out into uncomfortable silence, and Cas felt Dean’s arm go around him and his chin on his shoulder. Anna suddenly looked put out, like a little girl who had her ice cream taken from her without warning, and Gabriel just looked angry, face dark with rage. The silence became tense, and Bobby clearing his throat was the solace they were all looking for.

 

“I gotta go pick up Sam in a while,” he said, checking his watch. “How about I pick up pizza and you guys get settled in. Dean, you’re  in charge of educating Anna and Cas about good movies. Gabe, don’t do anything that would make this house fall to the ground.”

 

All the children nodded their affirmatives, and Bobby picked up his keys and nodded goodbye before opening the back door and setting out to his car. As the rumbling of the engine died away, the Novaks and Dean looked at each other awkwardly, before Dean led the way to the den and they popped in ‘There’s Something About Mary’, which he called a classic.

 

When Bobby got home, a few large pizzas and a hyperactive Sam in the back (he had gotten his first kiss with Jessica, and both were pretty sure it was going to be more than just a close friendship, though Bobby warned him not to tell Dean or else he wouldn’t hear the end of it), the house was full of laughter from all sides, Castiel laughing the loudest and the hardest when he got the jokes. Anna looked slightly mortified when the dinner scene came, when Cameron Diaz’s hair was gelled by ‘hair gel’, but she laughed as well, after admitting that the actress had looked very hot in this movie.

 

They ate pizza in front of the TV, now joined by Sam, who chose the next movie they watched, which happened to be the entire Star Wars series. Both boys cited the movies as classics as well, and were both quite affronted when even Gabriel, who had bootlegged a few movies when Michael wasn’t looking, admitted to not even seeing it.

 

The rest of the evening was spent watching movie after movie, and eventually, they had to head off to bed around 1 in the morning, eyes drooping and slightly burning from all of the movie watching, and a promise to watch some movies later in the week with the others.

 

And those were the pleasant moments of the weeks that followed. Dean and Sam and all of their friends managed to educate the Novaks in movies that were popular and quotable, making sure they at least could recognize them if mentioned in public. They would eat crappy junk food and laugh until they cried. Of course, there was homework to do, but that could always wait until the movie was finished, right?

 

Charlie gave Cas a huge hug as soon as she saw him, and did the same for Dean. Her vibrant hair was an almost perfect match for Anna’s, and no one could deny the flirtatious looks between the two.

 

Jo was outright furious with both of them for not alerting them to the sudden changes in both of their lives before crushing them in a bear hug that was surprisingly strong for her stature.

 

Jess hugged both boys as well, making sure that they were okay and that she was not overstepping any boundaries before floating her way over to Sam and linking their hands together.

 

Ash gave his condolences before holding up six movies and screaming, “LET’S GET THIS PARTY STARTED!”

 

But there were bad moments too. There were days when Dean wouldn’t get out of bed, when he would just stare at the wall again. Some days, Cas would just be quiet, and all of them would be quiet as well, just not feeling the urge to speak. Those periods, when everything got tense and they were reminded of what exactly was going on in their backyards, in the world outside of the tv screen, increased more and more as the trial date approached.

 

There was a session beforehand where there was an option for John to plea bargain, or plead guilty to the charges beforehand in order to avoid a long, drawn out trial, and to make sure there was a compiled list of witnesses that had been notified of their duty for court.

 

When Cas told Dean about his being a key witness, Dean didn’t react as strongly as he had hoped. Instead, he looked sad, and he said, “I wish you hadn’t been dragged into this, babe. You don’t deserve it. You don’t deserve me.”

 

Cas had cupped his boyfriend’s face, making sure he was looking him in the eye before saying, “Listen here, D-dean Winchester. You d-did not d-d-drag me into this. There was never g-going to be a way in which I c-c-could have been out of this situation, and I wouldn’t want to be either. I’m in this for you, and until it’s finished, I’m not g-g-g-gonna leave you. After that, I still won’t leave you, so g-get used to me being in your shit, D-d-dean, because I believe you d-deserve so much more than what you’ve g-gotten.”

  
They had kissed after that, and the tension between the two of them subsided, though the trial loomed ever closer on the horizon.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEYO! I am still alive, and have been crippled by writer's block for the past few months! It's true, although I could've done much more on my part by forcing myself back into the groove much earlier. But I'm lazy as hell, and also, I have an obsessive personality! So THAT's awesome. 
> 
> I apologize for the lateness of this chapter, and I believe the next chapter will be longer and the last one in this story. I feel that this end is coming up quickly, and will be much happier than this one. And, I also apologize if this chapter seems like a throwaway one. What happens is kinda quick kinda nonchalant. It may seem that I'm just running out of ideas, but this is how I think things happen in this world: they happen, and sometimes, it seems like something shitty out of a TV soap. But know this: I always planned for this to happen, so this wasn't a bullshit way to start the end of this story.
> 
> Either way, I'm sorry for the lateness of this, and get ready for the final chapter!!

The drive over to the courthouse was incredibly tense, and neither Bobby nor Sam nor Dean said a word. If they had, it would have been alone on the air, left to die a slow, agonizingly awkward death. There was no way that they could say anything that would decrease the anxiety that all three of them had in their guts.

Dean tried to look out the window to perhaps distract himself from the looming storm cloud on his horizon, but everything outside of it seemed to watch him pass by, as if they knew where he was going. The few people outside at this time in the morning (something he himself bemoaned; he should still be asleep now) stared at the car as it passed; the windows turned into judging eyes that followed his face with contempt; the sounds of the leaves blowing in the breeze became whispers. _‘Look, there’s Dean Winchester. He was beaten and fucked by his dad.’_

Suddenly, Dean didn’t want to look out the window anymore.

His stomach turning uncomfortably, he rested his head against the glass, letting his eyes close, even though he knew he wouldn’t get any sleep. How could Dean sleep when he would see his dad again, in a courtroom, and have to look the bastard in the eye as his lawyer negotiated the punishment he would face. If he had any say, Dean would imprison him without any hesitation. He would never wish him death, though; John was still his father, and putting him to the chair or to the injection felt much more like murder than justice. Sure, some people might deserve it, but that’s blood on his hands, and he would like to avoid that.

Sam wasn’t looking anywhere, having decided to space out. Glassy eyes stared straight ahead at the back of Dean’s seat, and he almost wished he could do the same. His mind was running a mile a minute, scenarios and questions and memories whirling around like water funneling down a drain, only these wouldn’t disappear so easily.

_What’s gonna happen today?_

__

_What if he gets off scot-free?_

__

_What if they separate Sam and me?_

__

_I can’t let that happen._

__

_Would Bobby let that happen?_

__

_He wouldn’t._

__

_I just want this to be over._

__

“Me, too, kid. Me, too.”

Dean hadn’t known he had spoken aloud, but apparently he had, since Bobby had answered. He sounded tired, as if he had been awake for far too long, past the point of monumental irritation. Years of denial, compliance for the sake of calling someone as close to a brother as John Winchester a friend, fear of interfering too much in his best friend’s family life, were interred in those five words, and Dean felt them acutely.

Sam didn’t speak either, but brother’s intuition told him that he wanted the same thing as Dean.

The courthouse swam into view slowly, as if mired in the depths of a pool of molasses. Yet, it loomed even higher than it was created to be, stretching leagues into the sky, clouds skirting the edges of the domed roof with the skitteriness of rats who encounter the harsh light of day. Justice herself stood upon the top of the building, scales held loosely in one hand and sword pointed upwards, as if to spear the very angels in Heaven themselves, as if they were guilty of something.

Though she was blindfolded, the statue held no sympathy for Dean, and though he welcomed the chance to make his father pay for all the damage he had caused, there was still a part of him that held onto to the tattered, warped memory of a benevolent father.

As he stared at the courthouse, Dean realized that there were two versions of John Winchester in his memory, fighting for his decision.

On the one hand was the father he had always known, always been familiar with. He was cruel, spiteful, homophobic, drunk, and more likely than not to hurt his son than help him. With him, there was a lingering sense of weakness, inability to act. There were no tears, but there was that burning behind Dean’s eyes, that knot of worms in his chest that ached like a wound not yet healed from surgery. He was warped in stature, arms sharpened into clawed hands and eyes as black and empty as the sinkhole Dean had found behind the elementary school in 4th grade.

But, on the other hand was the father of 4-year-old Dean. He was everything his father was not: loving, smiling, happy, and full of sunlight. Sure, he was a little strict even more so than a general father, but he was always there with good intentions. Opinions he had were kept behind doors, language was tender and considerate, and the intensity behind his eyes was one born of care and the desire to protect his son (about to be sons) from the world, no matter the cost.

Dean couldn’t reconcile himself to one father or the other, because both of them had become the opposite ends of a spectrum no one should have to fall on: the spectrum of Grief. There had never been a middle ground for Dean and Sam, and as much as he wished for it all to be over, he wanted one thing more than even that. He wanted to be safe.

“Boys, somethin’s goin’ on up there.”

Bobby’s warning came softly, but there was no hint of gentleness in it. It was fearful, determined, angry and protective. Only John could incite such a muddled mix of emotion.

Dean’s heart spiked in his chest, each beat carving new grooves into his ribs. He sat up, and looked out the window at a blob of human beings, so many of them familiar and yet so alien to him. There were two police cars at the scene, but they hadn’t responded; they had been there before. There was the sound of muted roaring, the sounds of human voices having died out seconds before they had arrived.

Bobby’s engine purred to a stall, and he got out of the car, ordering the Winchesters to stay put. As his door slammed, they watched as their godfather stalked towards the crowd, concerned eyes brushing past him and looking in on the car. Dean felt his stomach wriggle in discomfort as neighbors, shopkeepers, and maybe a few of John’s “friends”- the only one they actually liked had been Rufus, and he was the nicest to them- looked in at them with pitying eyes. Sam’s eyes glistened with unshed tears, the first ones born of panic, and Dean protectively wrapped his arm around him. He saw signs floating in the wind, on wooden stakes, and they read: JUSTICE FOR DEAN, or DIE, JOHN WINCHESTER, DIE! Some had more lenient messages, but either way, no one who had gathered there wanted John Winchester to get off scot-free.

Bobby had disappeared into the crowd, but he came out into plain view now, eyes red and grim frown on his face. Dean thought he saw his lip wobbling, but there was no time because he was opening the door silently, hand shaking slightly. He didn’t look at them, not for a very long time, and the murmuring crowd had continued to whisper words that none of the Winchester boys could understand. They were bad words, sad words, words that the younger boy had heard none of, but ones the older boy had heard only once, at the age of four.

They were words of death.

“Boys, I’m-I’m afraid something has…. happened.”

They rang silently in the pregnant air, and Dean’s mind curled in on itself, whimpering quietly under their weight.

“Is it John?”

His whisper was little more than that, and still he felt the entirety of his world rest on his words’ shoulders. The sky seemed to shudder under the force of something strong, something tainted bitter and colored an unhealthy black.

Bobby didn’t answer.

Dean’s heart had jumped back into his throat again, its pulsing threatening to close his windpipe and block out his lungs and force him to pass out. He was suffocating with all the air around him, and ocean of life that he was somehow unable to drink. Everything seemed to close in on him again, a panic attack slithering along the edges of his mind like hungry vipers ready to sink their fangs into his exposed neck and end him forever.

He got out of the car quickly, without a sound. The world seemed numb, almost crushingly so, and Dean couldn’t feel his legs. Still, they moved, and he watched as he proceeded towards the crowd. The wind rustled his white dress shirt, and he saw his black tie tug towards the sky, eager to leave him, like a dying bird given one last chance to fly outside of its cage. Each step he took resonated inside of his head, a pounding the seemed to crack the universe with each pulse.

Faces drew past him, blurred like the ones you see when a car passes by. The motion almost pulls them wider, stretching their skin and their eyes into slits you can barely see, and then they’re gone. Only, now, Dean saw them pass by in slow motion, every detail excruciatingly defined.

He passed Ellen Harvelle, Jo’s mom, and she looked conflicted, torn between relief and utter despair.

He passed Rufus, one of Bobby’s and John’s shared friends, holding his baseball cap down in his hand. He looked at Dean guiltily, as if it was something he had done, or maybe didn’t but was supposed to do.

He passed Benny and Gad, and they were both red-eyed. The Cajun man’s hand was on the wheelchair-bound man’s shoulder, and he saw with a little passing envy that Gad’s hand covered his own. He was still sobbing softly, not even able to look at Dean. He wished that Cas were here.

No one said anything, and later, Dean would understand why.

Everyone was clustered around a car, a Chevy pickup truck that had hit something in the middle of the road. The fender was bent completely out of shape, and there was a little bit of blood dripping from the most concave section. The windshield was cracked, a radial pattern of broken glass and spider-web cracks. Any other day, he would think that it was weirdly beautiful.

Lying on the ground, in front of the truck, was a man. He had black hair, a greying beard, and his eyes were closed. In Dean’s head, they had once been pure black, from the thousands of panic attacks and nightmares he had caused. He was wearing as nice clothes as he could afford: a shabby suit jacket over a stained dress shirt, brown slacks held up by a belt Dean’s back had seen too much of, and ratty black loafers. There was a pool of blood around him, and the smell of rusty pennies wafted into the air.

He had wanted to feel something, some sort of twisted glee that his father was dead, or maybe a sense of relief that he had been freed from the paranoia, the skittish years of abuse and torture that would leave lasting scars. But Dean felt nothing; he was numb, immersed in the feeling of limbs that were asleep. He had been shoved into an ice bath, naked, and he wasn’t ever going to get out.

Dean thought he heard an “I’m sorry” drift on the wind, in his father’s dead voice, but he didn’t think it mattered much now.

John Winchester was pronounced dead on the scene, and in the same afternoon, Dean and Sam Winchester were transferred to the care of Robert Singer, as he was listed as both boys’ godfather. His death had been ruled as a suicide, and it was presumed that, when he had been escorted to the county courthouse, he had been unable to deal with either his transgressions or did not want to be pronounced guilty in the eyes of the law, and ran into traffic with the handcuffs still on his hands.

For weeks afterward, Dean didn’t speak to anyone but Cas, and even then, it took a lot to get more than a single sentence out of him. No one tried to get him to talk other than his boyfriend, and even the daily calls from Benny refused to pull him out of his silence.

A lot of people were angry, and there were more than a few suspects to be angry at.

The majority of the townsfolk were pissed as hell that,after all he had done, John Winchester had opted to take the easy way out, the road of cowardice and damnation rather than attempting to recover from his more-than-popularly accepted psychosis. No one liked to admit that, in his shoes, they would’ve done the same; guilt is almost as universal as love, and sometimes, even more so. People still came to his funeral, a quiet affair that was missing one of the Winchester boys, and nobody needed to guess who.

Some people were angry at Dean, for not speaking up earlier and making this mess a whole lot easier. They saw the connections between the two Winchesters- both had attempted suicide, were damaged beyond repair- and, to be honest, they were sick of hearing about poor Dean Winchester, who regularly lapses into muteness and has panic attacks when loud words are exchanged. He had had his time in the spotlight as the town celebrity, like his father, but times needed to change, and he was still attracting attention to himself. Azazel and Crowley were of that latter mindset, and again, a lot of people didn’t want to admit that they felt the same way, that this wasn’t even a big deal anymore, and that that stupid Winchester boy was just stirring shit up so that everyone would pity him.

The Winchesters thought they needed a break, they had suffered too much.

Finally, a lot of people got angry at Marvin Angelo, who hounded Dean and Sam after their father’s suicide. He printed columns day and night, preaching about the word of the Lord having been John’s only chance at salvation. He condemned the entire Winchester line, and also brought in the Campbell line, Mary’s family. They had all had hard deaths, early deaths, and thus, their name was dragged into the Winchester dirt. Some were angry at him for bringing in another family, who had been hurt just as badly as they had, and others simply wanted the little rat-faced shitstain to follow John’s footsteps and just off himself already. Gabriel Novak had had that much to say, and when he realized Dean had been in the room and had ran to his room with no noise other than a choked sob, he had been the victim to the rage of Anna and Cas combined.

The Novaks were angry with the whole situation, and really, only wished that Dean and Sam would get better soon; neither boy had been much like themselves and they had expected that, but they hadn’t realized how long of a process it would be.

Dean was angry that his father had died.

He had wished quite a few times that John would end up dead one way or another. He had envisioned himself beating, kicking, punching, running over, or even stabbing him to death with no remorse for his actions at all. He had foreseen his being arrested by the police, sentenced to a long prison sentence, and possibly being killed in a prison riot. But, no matter how many times Dean wished death on him, he had never wanted him to actually die.

What he had wanted was for John to go to jail, repent, and maybe attempt to be a better father. As unlikely as that was, he thought there would be some cause for hope at the plea bargain, or even the trial itself. It was either that, or he just wanted to live a life without his father. He wouldn’t be dead, but he would be as close to it as possible.

Every option he would have preferred provided Dean with some sort of catharsis, some sort of release from the bad memories of the past. He would’ve eventually pushed past the screaming, the waking from nightmares, drenched in cold sweat, old scars burning against his skin. He would’ve progressed through his relationship with Cas, graduated high school, gotten a degree, without ever having to be reminded of the 3 years he had spent being his father’s fucktoy, his punching bag.

But, now, he had killed himself, and there was no such release for Dean Winchester.

Just a week after the suicide, he woke himself up from a nightmare, screaming and crying hysterically. His father’s shadows had been creeping up behind him, gnarled, clawed fingers grasping for any part of Dean, and he had been whispering, _“you’re my little bitch, boy. you are mine to play with. mineminemineminemineMINEMINEMINEMINE!_ ” He hadn’t known Cas was there beside him, but he had been enveloped in warm arms and soothing tones. His crying had softened, but it took him a long time to go to sleep after that.

For hours, Cas and Dean stared out the window at the full moon, not saying a word but knowing quite well what the other was thinking.

“You c-can d-d-do this, D-Dean Winchester. I love you, and we will g-g-g-get through this together.” Cas had whispered into Dean’s neck, and he felt something stir, just a little, inside of his chest, a little blue flame that was as cold as a winter’s snow, but rejuvenating like the rays of the sun. It was small, much too small to end his depression right then and there, but he knew it would grow, and each day was devoted to nurturing it.

But, for now, he would cry, and he would cry loudly and ugly and hysterically, because tears are the body’s way of saying, I can do it, I can get it out.

The Novaks and Winchesters burnt all of John’s stuff a month after his death. They had rifled through the old house John had acquired, where all of Dean’s worst moments had come, and the place still stank of alcohol, smoke, and sex. He didn’t want to admit he could still smell his father, breathing down his neck, calling him “Mary”.

Any boxes they could fill with stuff, they sent to Goodwill. Otherwise, the burnt the old property to the ground. It wasn’t really owned by anyone, and a few calls from the county had transferred it directly into Dean’s ownership, but he didn’t want anything to do with that damn house.

Dean felt the match in his hand, and looked down at its small, red-capped form. It was insignificant alone, a small, breakable piece of wood. But it had the power to ravage, to destroy, to prepare for rebirth. There was a small trail of gas leading to the property, far out of the way of any other houses. There was no grass nearby alive enough to catch fire when they lit it, so really, it was a simple and easy thing to do.

Sam was standing next to him, already growing taller than him. He had neglected to bring Jess along, on the count of not wanting her to be involved in this; this was a Winchester thing, and the less people touched by the cruel aftereffects, the more lives they could spare. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes held barely-veiled contempt for the house. It was a cursed artifact to him, a talisman that stank of blood and tears, and he wanted to destroy any remnant of his father, because he had hurt Dean, and he had only just been spared.

Bobby stood with them, and the Novaks were on the other side. Gabriel was sucking on a cherry lollipop, but there was no smile in his face. Anna held the gas can, and with her jeans and a midriff-baring t-shirt, she looked like a total badass. Her eyes held the same spark of contempt that her brother had.

Cas was on Dean’s other side, hand clasped tightly in his.

“Are you ready?” he asked, squeezing his boyfriend’s hand in his own.

 **  
**Dean’s answer came in the sizzle of a lighted match, and then the bursting or orange-red flames.


	20. Chapter 20

“D-Dean, let me--”

“No, Cas! I can do it by myself!”

“If you could, you wouldn’t be struggling, now, would you?”

“I don’t need your sass, okay? I’m not struggling, Cas, I’m-- don’t roll your eyes at me! I’m just workin’ out all the kinks to this. Tying a bowtie isn’t that--” Dean yanked the bowtie apart harshly. As it fell back to its original position of only two, untied black strips of cloth, he sighed, glaring up at the ceiling in exasperation.

Cas’s fingers crept their way to Dean’s bowtie, and, to both of their surprise, he didn’t jerk away and attempt to reclaim his damaged pride. Even if he didn’t want to admit it, bowties are incredibly hard to tie, especially for the first time.

His boyfriend’s thin fingers grasped the tie straps gently, but firmly, going through each step so that Dean could see it. He ignored his remarks of “I know what I’m doing, Cas.” and “I know you flip it this way.”, and focused on the task at hand. At many times during their relatively young relationship, Cas had seen the good and the bad that came with Dean Winchester, at the best and worst times. He had seen his generosity when he had given another child, smaller and younger, some money to buy food he claimed undoubtedly had been long awaited. He had seen his humor when some uppity jerk sitting next to them at the restaurant talked a little too loudly about the state of the country, how it’s gone to the dogs because of those gays and their agenda. He had seen his rage at a mother yelling too loudly and too harshly at her child in the grocery store, and Dean had had to be led away to prevent an incident. He had seen his stubbornness as his boyfriend refused to change the channel from Doctor Sexy even though it was just the commercials.

His stubbornness was in full reign now, but Cas saw, with a small smile, that it was giving way to contentedness. Dean’s emerald eyes were no longer indignant, but soft and maybe a little misty. He was lost in his thoughts again, and he took full advantage of his dream-like state to finish the bow tie and help him shrug on his jacket before snapping him out of it by slapping his butt.

Cas wished he had had a phone to record the surprised yelp that came out of his mouth, and capture the flushed face that accompanied it.

“What the-- Cas, don’t do that shit to me!” he said, looking at him with a cheeky grin. “You know what that does to me.”

Cas let his boyfriend snake his arms around his waist, countering his widening irises with a mock-innocent look of his own, with a seductive curl to his lips.

“What? What d-does that d-d-do to you, Dean? I wouldn’t know--”

He was cut off by rather firm lips, and he surrendered himself to a small makeout session before pulling away, flustered and content. He felt the lingering hands on his waist, and maybe a little lower than they should be, and slapped them lightly, saying, “Ah, ah, ah. You are wearing a tuxedo, and I would absolutely hate if it g-got wrinkled before the wedding.”

Dean pouted a little, eyes flashing with mischief.

“I doubt that Benny and Gad would mind us being a little late, Cas. Especially when we’re nearing our six-month anniversary.”

“I rather think that would, D-Dean. As much as I would love to stay in and spend the afternoon and evening with you, and probably every other day until we d-die, this is a very special exception, and we promised we would be there.”

Dean gave a faux-sigh of exasperation, but Cas could see the smile curling his lips as he put on his own jacket on and pushed past him to walk down the stairs. All of the Novaks and Winchesters were there (which was to say Sammy and, by honorary decree, Bobby), and as Cas came down the steps behind Dean, he saw a mixture of expressions: Anna and Sam looked star-struck, as if they had been smacked in the face with the same vision that only they could see; Gabriel looked completely and utterly the same, though with a tinge of anxiety that comes from _finally, let’s get on and go already!_ ; and Bobby had an unreadable expression on his face, and he thought he saw a small tear form in his eye before he blinked, and it was gone.

“Sorry we’re late, guys. Whiny baby D-Dean couldn’t tie a bowtie, and he almost strangled the poor thing before I stepped in.” Cas said, elbowing him as he passed him to stand next to the front door.

“I was _not_ ,” Dean said indignantly, grabbing the keys to the Impala before flicking Cas’s nose and opening the door.

As Cas chased after Dean out to the car, the rest of the party took a moment to give each other a knowing look; every one of them, except for Gabriel, understood what was not said, and they all took great pleasure in the middle Novak’s shouts of “Waitaminute, what’d I miss? Guys? _Guys! WHAT WAS THAT LOOK FOR?!_ ”

The ride to the chapel was as smooth as usual for the Novak-Winchester clan: there was a lot of laughter, more than one head smack, and a lot of groans that had something to do with Gabriel either farting loudly or Dean’s driving over the speed limit. The wedding was to start officially at 5:30, and with Dean’s inability to tie a goddamn bowtie, they were pushing 5:00 as their ETA. Thus, the elder Winchester decided to barely obey any speed limit signs, which succeeded in getting them to the church at 4:59, exactly.

They entered the church with exasperated whispers of “Shut up!” and Bobby jerking the cherry lollipop out of Gabriel’s mouth and tossing into the trashcan, ignoring the panicked and pained whimper that came out of his mouth in response.

Really, all of them had to deal with Gabriel Novak on a regular basis, and his ability to annoy all of them in a minimum of one or two instances an hour was considered a record for all involved. However, considering he had considerably more people to act as a pest towards and prank with reinvigorated creativity, Gabriel was more than happy to accommodate his new-ish family with is brand of affection. By the end of the first real month of them all living in the same house (an arrangement that Bobby had been fine with at first, but later regretted for the aforementioned Novak child), Sam had had to buy three new toothbrushes because the others had been doused in molasses, Dean began changing into clothes inside the bathroom because of an unfortunate incident involving a loose towel and a camera flash, and Anna’s hair had been cut into a rudimentary pixie-cut, which she amended before hiding all of Gabriel’s candy.

For the moment, all of them were just praying that Gabriel would act like a gentleman at least for the wedding itself- the reception afterwards was fair game.

The scattered group of people in the pews turned to look at the approaching group, and Dean couldn’t help but be saddened by the lack of family on either side of the church. Both grooms had, unfortunately, been kicked out of their respective homes for their romantic predilections, though only Benny remained attached to his family name. Gad had been disowned legally, and was his own man, without any real support.

It was a miracle both men managed to stay afloat, financially, but they somehow managed it, and were now living together-- and about to be married.

Pamela Barnes, former psychologist and therapist associated with Bleeding Heart Memorial Hospital, was closest to the front, black hair curled and wearing a sunny yellow dress, appropriate enough for a wedding but risque enough for Ms. Barnes. When the hospital had found out she had paired a patient and a student shadow together under the hopes of inspiring a relationship, she had been fired for behaving unethically, which was only bolstered by her inappropriate dress conduct and past sexual encounters within its walls.

To which, Pam had replied, “Okey-dokey. I’m out, bitches.”

She was trying to pin down another job as a psychotherapist at some other hospital, but the hunt was slow, and she had taken up some shifts at Benny’s diner, which had boosted business there with the addition of a very beautiful and sexy woman-- her words, not Dean’s or Cas’s.

Charlie and her girlfriend Gilda were on Gad’s side of the church, and their hands were clasped together. They had met during a LARPing tournament, and no one dared to say “love at first site”: they had hated each other for weeks before Charlie was tricked into a date with the almost unnaturally beautiful girl. She had mixed parents who had no problems with her being a lesbian, and Charlie bonded with them as if they were her adoptive parents, with her mother in the hospital. After that first date, the girls were inseparable.

Jo and Ellen Harvelle sat a row behind Charlie, with Jo blushing furiously at Anna Novak and Ellen blushing just as hard at Bobby, who managed to pull off the tuxedo look with his signature trucker’s cap. Both women had grown closer to the Winchesters and Novaks following John’s funeral and the burning of the house, and while Ellen had not previously known about Jo’s tendency to straddle the line between boys and girls, she had no problem accepting her-- as long as she kept the door open when Anna was over and that she treated her with politeness and kindness.

Anna took a seat next to Jo, and Ellen patted the seat next to her, which Bobby obliged by sitting next to her, hand just centimeters from her own. They had only been on a few dates-- unconventional ones, as they had been a visit to the shooting range and a alcohol mixing lesson for the older man-- but no one was ready to think that they would fall out of love with each other.

It had been a long time coming, and they had even placed bets-- Dean raking in the cash with a wide grin and a joke to bobby about “keeping it G-rated”.

Other than them, Ash and Jess and the rest of their lunch group were clustered on Benny’s side, and Dean let Sam escape to his girlfriend- a fact that none of them had known about until Sam had already had his first kiss. They had been tipped off by the simultaneous big-ass smile on his face and the not-so-subtle wail of anguish from Gabriel’s room, and also the hickey that had decorated his neck a day or so later. He had been set on by Bobby for over an hour, making sure he knew how to treat a woman like and not act like Dean had in the beginning of his and Castiel’s relationship.

Dean and Cas kept walking to the front of the church, where the aisle ended and the dais began. The priest was there, playing a game on his phone, something that looked suspiciously like Angry Birds, and Gad was sitting there in his wheelchair, looking nervous and excited.

“Hey, Gad.” the boys said, and Dean cheered inwardly at his boyfriend’s saying his name without a stutter. Cas had been attempting speech therapy to improve his stutter, but he was more than a little outspoken at wanting only to improve it, not get rid of it. It had brought Dean and Cas together, and he wasn’t gonna give it up.

“Hello, Castiel and Dean.” the man said, his smile reaching up into his eyes and crinkling them. He was wearing a classic black tux, with a purple flower pinned to his lapel. The wheelchair had been adorably decked out in similarly colored ribbons twining around the arm rests and the wheel-spokes.

“You excited?” Cas asked, a small smile on his face and the sky echoing in his eyes.

After hesitating for a moment, Gad nodded, and he wiped his face with his hand. “I’ve been sweating for at least thirty minutes, and I know he’s gonna be here, but there’s still that little fear that--”

“If Benny left you at the altar, Cas and I would find him and tear his balls from his body.”

Cas let out an indignant, “D-Dean!” while Gad stared stonily at him for a second before bursting into laughter, his wheelchair shaking and squeaking. Everyone else stopped speaking to look at them, and Cas put his face in his hands while Dean snickered. Gad’s eyes were brimming with tears, and Dean was about to say something else when Becky Rosen, who had been in charge of guarding the door, screamed “HE’S COOOOOOMING!”

There was a moment of chaos, people straightening their hair and their dresses, adjusting their tuxes, and trying to wrestle Anna and Jo apart, who had been making out quietly a few pews behind Ellen. All in all, everyone was ready as Benny walked through the double doors and down the aisle-- except Gad, who was still holding back laughs.

Cas and Dean took their positions behind Benny and Gad, making sure that they had the rings in their pockets. Since neither of the men’s parents were associating with them anymore, Benny walked the aisle alone, and Dean had to admit, it actually worked in their favor. It was just enough like a wedding to warrant the calling it a “wedding”, but it was just different enough that it felt unique.

When Benny got to the dais, purple flower matching Gad’s, Gad had reigned in his chuckles, but now his eyes were tearing up at the sight of his fiance-- soon to be husband. Benny, too, was a little misty-eyed, and the priest began speaking as they joined hands.

“We are gathered here today for the union of Benjamin Lafitte and Gadreel Sullivan in holy matrimony, under the eye of God, to carry throughout their lives and onward to Heaven.”

The priest stopped, chuckled a little as he looked down at his Bible, and held up a note card, with a mischievous glint in his eye. Cas followed the look to Gabriel, who was standing in the back of the church, sucking on a lollipop (where does he keep getting them?!) and looking more than a little smug.

Oh no.

Cas gave Dean a nudge, and as his boyfriend saw what he had just seen, steeled himself for what was about to happen. He was hoping that there weren’t any buckets of paint to be dropped on the newlyweds, or a jar of bees to be opened and set on the guests, or even cuts in either groom’s pants so that they would fall down with the help of thin wires. Anything was up for grabs, and neither of them wanted to see this day ruined.

The priest opened his mouth, and everyone waited, breath halted and tensions as high as the temperature of a Georgia summer.

“Mawwage. Mawwage is wot brings us togevah, today. Mawwage, dat bwessed awwangement, dat dweam wifin a dweam…”

Everyone lost their shit in about two seconds. Dean and Cas collapsed against each other, Dean’s eyes streaming tears of unadulterated laughter and Cas laughing so hard he couldn’t stand. Bobby was outright laughing, the first booming laugh either boys had seen come out of that mouth since Dean fell flat on his face walking down the stairs. Anna and Jo were barely holding their composure, and Ellen was torn between laughing and giving Gabriel a glare to kill even the most enduring of monsters. Pam cackled like a witch, head thrown back, and Sam’s high pitched 13-year-old rand across the pews, matched by Jess’s almost dainty tinkle of laughter.

Benny and Gad were laughing as well, but were able to regain the composure enough for Gad to say quite loudly, “Skip to the end!”

Once again, laughter was reignited, and anyone who was standing was now sitting on the floor, holding their shaking sides and trying their best not to dissolve into giggles at everyone else. Gabriel’s composure had cracked now, and he was trying his best not to show how funny he thought he was, and Bobby was wiping his face with his hand to get rid of tear tracks.

“Do you have da wings?” The priest asked, and with some difficulty, Dean and Cas handed them to their respective grooms. Benny, still shaking, managed to put his ring on Gad on the first try, while Gad had considerably more trouble, both because of laughter and the fact that Benny’s fingers were a little too big for the ring. Dean was sure had had never laughed harder at Gad’s grumblings about “those sausage link motherfuckers” as he slammed the ring on his finger.

Benny and Gad kissed clumsily, both of them still laughing hysterically, especially with the height difference-- Benny was a giant, and Gad was in a wheelchair. The priest said, “I now pronounce you married, husband and husband, groom and groom, whatever you want, really.” with a smile on his face, and there was loud cheering from Sam, Jo, and Ash, and Gabriel’s remark of “I SAW SOME TONGUE” earned him a slap to the back of the head from Bobby, who was still smiling.

As they all traipsed out of the chapel, Gad put a sticker on the side of his wheelchair, and Cas saw with no small amount of awe, it read: “Just Married”. The only thing that made the whole thing that much more adorable was Benny wheeling his husband out of the front doors, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“That could be us in a few years or so.” Dean said in his ear, before kissing his cheek and skipping off to the Impala, slapping Sam on the head on the way and screaming “SHOTGUN!”. Cas looked on at what comprised his new life: Bobby and Anna and Dean and Sam and Jo and Ash and Pam and Gabriel and everyone else, and he realized that though he wasn’t a fan of hospitals, one had certainly brought about a green-eyed boy that changed his life, perhaps for good.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is the end. It was a lot of fun writing and finishing this fic. It was hard at times, and motivation decided to bitch-slap me for a few months or so and leave me until I got off my lazy ass and finished this. I had so much fun hearing from all of you and getting your feedback, even though I reacted to some stuff a little more negatively than was necessary. I;m so glad you guys thought this was good enough to read and rate, and I hope to write even better things in the future. 
> 
> I love all of you, and keep reading, writing, liking, loving, and being you!

**Author's Note:**

> As I said before, things will get really shitty for Dean and Cas, and remember to leave kudos and criticisms! I need the help, if I'm going to continue this and any other fanfictions I come up with! BTW: my chapter lengths are seriously screwed uo, because I don't pay attention to them! I just write until I feel satisfied. Some chapters may be longer than others.


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